


Not All Dragons Kidnap Princes; Some Just Want to Make Friends

by AntagonizedPenguin



Series: How Best to Use a Sword [10]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Sex, Biting, Competitive sex, Cum Marking, M/M, Marathon Sex, Mostly not chronological with the rest of the series, Oral Sex, Rutting, Size Kink, They make friends, and other things, dragon and human, jerking off together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 04:58:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 13
Words: 21,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13651908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntagonizedPenguin/pseuds/AntagonizedPenguin
Summary: Travis heard that everyone was going off to find the dragon that kidnapped the princess, so he went off to find him too.The difference was, Travis wasn't going to slay the dragon. He wanted to be its friend.





	1. Not All Dragons Kidnap Princes; Some Just Want to Make Friends

**Author's Note:**

> I bet you weren't expecting a new story! But here we are. This one isn't going to be full-length; I currently have it clocked at 13 chapters. I just wanted to show some fun backstory for two side characters in the main series. 
> 
> Credit also to my Tumblr friend Gamerkun0525, with whom I've talked about these characters a lot before writing them. 
> 
> Like the tags say, this story isn't happening alongside the main chronology. It's mostly placed in the very early chapters of the series for now.

This was really cool. 

It was mostly just rocks and dirt and stuff, but it was a mountain in a range of mountains and Travis had never climbed a mountain before. Now here he was, climbing a mountain, and it was _cool_. 

Admittedly, it wasn’t as cool as it would be if he’d found a dragon, but still. 

Travis knew that other people thought it was silly, his plan. But he didn’t care. He didn’t want to hear that it was unrealistic or silly or that he should just stay home. He was tired of just staying home, and he was old enough that he wasn’t going to do that anymore just because he’d been told to.

Everyone was all in an uproar because the princess had been kidnapped by a dragon and was looking all over the countryside for her. They were going to kill the dragon, which Travis thought was too bad because dragons were awesome, and it had probably only kidnapped the princess because it was lonely. 

Which was why Travis planned to make friends with it. That way, the dragon could give the princess back and still have friends and nobody would have to kill it. 

Dragons were huge, so Travis hadn’t thought they’d be good at hiding, but apparently they were because after a few days in the mountains, he hadn’t found a single one, except for maybe seeing one flying in the distance yesterday, but that might just have been a bird. 

Travis was choosing to pretend it was a dragon, though. It was cooler that way and he saw birds all the time. He hadn’t come all the way out to these mountains to look at birds. 

The guys running he orphanage he lived at called Travis ‘energetic,’ which he’d recently learned was probably secret code for ‘annoying,’ but he was finding that he was less and less energetic the more he slogged through these mountains. It got harder and harder, especially as he went higher up, and he had already taken more breaks today than he had all day yesterday, and it wasn’t lunchtime yet. 

“Ugh,” Travis said to himself, sitting down on a rock and deciding that it was lunchtime now. He reached into his bag and rooted around for his supplies, deciding that he had enough for a few more days if he was careful, then he’d have to go down the mountain again or figure out how hunting worked so he could eat birds. It probably wasn’t that bad and he’d eaten chickens and stuff before and they tasted okay. Whatever weird mountain birds lived here in the mountains probably tasted pretty much like that. 

Looking out over the vista from the ledge he was on, Travis sighed. “Where are you, dragons?” 

No dragons presented themselves to answer his question, and he sighed again and started eating, not really tasting the food as he chewed, grateful that nobody was around to accuse him of pouting. He wasn’t pouting, he was just expressing his perfectly reasonable disappointment at the lack of dragons. 

“Everyone’s going to laugh at me if I go home without a dragon friend,” Travis muttered when he finished eating. He may or may not have spent more than a little bit of time bragging about how he was going to be the first guy in the world to make friends with a dragon, and promising to bring the dragon home to prove it to everyone. 

Looking back, he may or may not have been goaded into that by some of his friends at the orphanage who hadn’t believed in him. He had to find a dragon out here to make friends with, because if he didn’t, he was going to have to go back home alone and the friends he already had were going to say he was a liar and laugh at him. 

“Where are you, dragons?” Travis called out again, his voice echoing across the mountains. He startled some more dumb birds into flight, but no dragons answered his call so he sighed, packed his stuff away, took a minute to pee off the side of the cliff and then, tucking himself back into his pants as he walked since there was nobody here to tackle him for letting it hang out for a second. 

Travis liked all his friends and he liked the orphanage and the town and everything, but some parts of being off on his own were pretty good. Nobody was making sure he had the exact right pee etiquette, nobody teased him if he tried to sleep naked, and he didn’t have to sneak away in the night or carefully check to make sure people were sleeping before he played with himself. There was something to be said for that, and for the fact that he should just shoot his stuff right off the side of a mountain and not have to deal with cleaning it up. They weren’t good enough reasons to stop him from going home or anything, but the freedom that he’d never had before was pretty cool. 

This as a pretty wide path that had a pretty steep incline, but it wasn’t hard to climb at least so Travis kept walking, keeping his eyes peeled for caves, since that was where dragons lived, and watching the sky to see if any flew by. Nothing so far, as usual. Mountains were cool, but they’d be cooler with dragons. 

Travis didn’t regret this, not at all. Even if he didn’t find anything, he was glad that he’d done it and come here and seen all this and proven that he totally could take care of himself and see the world if he wanted. But whoever said that the journey was more important than the destination might have been right, but obviously their destination hadn’t included dragons or they probably wouldn’t have said that. 

Their destination had probably been a monastery or something. People in stories with important morals were always looking for famous monasteries and becoming monks and stuff. 

Travis was just contemplating how he definitely wouldn’t go on a trip like this just to look for a monastery when he rounded a bend in the path and nearly fell into the cave that was there. “Oh.” If he’d just kept climbing for a bit instead of stopping for lunch, he could have found his earlier. 

Oh, well. He was here now and that was what mattered. There were still some hours of sunlight left, so there was time to look around. Maybe there was a dragon inside!

Excited again, Travis hurried into the mouth of the cave, peering around. There wasn’t much inside, but it did smell a bit funny. Caves all smelled funny, in Travis’s experience. 

“Hello?” Travis called, because if there was a dragon here, he didn’t want to surprise it and get cooked. They weren’t friends yet and people didn’t much like it when someone just wandered into their house, so Travis couldn’t imagine that dragons were much different. “Is anyone home?” He knew there probably wasn’t, there hadn’t been anyone home in any of the other caves he’d gone to. “I’m not here to kill you or anything! I promise! I just wanted to meet you! Hello?”

There was no answer as usual, and Travis gave a resigned sigh. “I just want to meet a dragon,” he muttered, kicking at a loose stone as he turned around. 

When he back was turned, Travis heard a scratching sound, some rocks shifting. “Um…”

Jumping a little, Travis turned back around, prepared to do…something, but he wasn’t sure what. That definitely hadn’t been his voice. Maybe it was someone who’d been kidnapped by a dragon?

There, near the back of the cave. There was a head poking over a rock outcropping, peering at him. It was a boy about his age, maybe a little younger, with white hair. And horns, long horns that came up out of his forehead and curved above his hair. “Hi,” the boy said, sounding nervous. “Did…were you looking for a specific dragon, or…”


	2. Big and Scary Don’t Make the Dragon

Travis stared at the strange horned boy. The boy stared back at him. They both stared at each other for a good long while. The boy blinked. 

“Oh, wow!” Travis said, stepping back and pointing at the strange boy. “You have horns!”

The boy nodded awkwardly, looking at Travis funny. “All dragons have horns.”

“You’re a dragon?” Travis squinted at him. “I thought dragons were…you know…” he mimed wings with his arms, puffing himself up to indicate size. “Big. And scaly, and big. And like, lizards with claws and tails and stuff. And big.” 

He was pretty sure, if nothing else, that they didn’t look like human boys with horns.

“I’m not done growing,” the boy said, a little defensive, giving Travis a frown. He shifted behind his rock. “My sire looks like that. And I have a tail.”

“Really?” Travis peered at him some more, but the boy was still mostly hiding behind that rock, so he didn’t see anything. “Can I see?”

“I guess,” the boy said, and he stepped out from behind the rock. The first thing Travis noticed was that he did indeed have a tail, a long, scaled tail that dragged on the ground a little, about as thick around as Travis’s arm. It was a light grey to match his horns. 

“Oh, wow…” Travis said, taking a step closer to get a better look at it. That was when he noticed the second thing, which was that the boy was butt naked without that rock to hide him. “Um. Oh, sorry! I can turn around if you want to get dressed!”

“Dressed?”

“Um, like. Put clothes on?” Travis asked. He wasn’t embarrassed or anything, it wasn’t like he’d never seen a naked boy before; there were a lot of other boys at the orphanage and they only had a few rooms to sleep in and all bathed together usually. He just knew that sometimes people were shy. Probably this boy wasn’t shy if he’d just wandered out into the open skyclad, but sometimes people forgot and Travis had kind of barged into his house. 

“Clothes?” the boy asked. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s like…” Travis frowned a little, then pointed at himself. “Like this.”

“Like your fur?”

“It’s not fur, it’s…” Travis didn’t know what it was. Plants, probably. But he could sense that he’d confuse the boy if he said that. “Nevermind. Do you just never cover yourself up, then?”

“No. Why would I? I’d get hot.”

He had a point. Travis nodded, deciding that if the strange boy wasn’t shy about being naked, then it didn’t bother him either. “Okay. So…you really are a dragon?”

“Yes,” the dragon boy said slowly. “I already said that. Are humans all this dumb?”

“Hey! I’m not dumb!” Travis said, crossing his arms. “I’ve never seen a dragon before!”

“Oh.” The dragon boy looked him up and down. “Well, I’ve never seen a human before. Um. Dragons don’t all look like me. Most of us look like you were saying before.”

Travis nodded, assured that he hadn’t been totally wrong about how the world worked. “So…why don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” the dragon boy said, looking down at himself, which was when Travis noticed the third important thing—despite being kind of short, the dragon boy was bigger than him in one particularly noticeable way. “I just don’t, I guess?”

Well, that was a good enough answer for Travis. It wasn’t like he could shake answers out of him if there weren’t anyway. “Okay. My name’s Travis.”

“I’m…” the dragon boy growled something that sounded half like a roar and half like sounds that people made. 

Travis blinked. “Um. I don’t think I can say that. Sorry.”

The dragon boy giggled. He was cuter than Travis had thought dragons would be. “That’s okay. I guess we’re not the same all the way through.”

The horns and tail and dick too big for his frame had already suggested that they weren’t the same even some of the way through, but Travis nodded, trying to stop looking at that. It was obviously just because he was a dragon, that was all. Travis was a perfectly respectable size for a human boy, easily in the middle of the pack of boys his age at the orphanage. “Um. Can I call you Joey?” Travis had almost sort of heard something like that in the jumble of sounds. 

“Sure, if that’s easier for you,” Joey said, tail swishing back and forth. “Um. Do you want to come inside, or…”

“Sure!” Travis didn’t mean to raise his voice, and he stepped inside the cave. “This is a nice cave.”

“I guess so,” Joey said, looking around again. “It’s not as nice as the one me and my sire used to live in, but he made me leave a few weeks ago.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Joey looked sad for a minute. “He told me I was too old to live with him, and that he had better things to do than nurse me anymore.”

That kind of made Travis sad too, and he slipped his pack off, setting it gently on the ground. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Joey said, looking away. He sat down, cross-legged, tail wrapped around himself. “It’s just what happens. I always knew when I got old enough I’d have to live by myself.”

Travis shook his head. “Nobody should have to live by themselves.” 

Joey blinked at him. His eyes seemed really big, but Travis was pretty sure it was his imagination. “You’re by yourself.” 

That struck Travis kind of hard, and he took a second to answer. “Uh. Yeah. Well, I had an orphanage that I lived at, and stuff. So it’s not like I’m by myself.”

“You’re by yourself right now.”

“That’s because I came looking for dragons!” Travis blushed a little. He hadn’t really expected the dragons to look this much like him. He hadn’t really expected that he’d be having a conversation with one. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.”

“That’s okay.” Joey giggled again. “What are you going to do now that you found a dragon?”

“Um…” It took Travis a second to remember that he’d had a whole plan. “Well, I was hoping I could make friends.”

“You want to be my friend?”

Travis looked at Joey. Joey was not the kind of dragon he’d imagined. He’d imagined someone bigger (not like that), scalier, scarier. But Joey’s face had kind of lit up at that question, and now he couldn’t really remember why he’d imagined any of that. Joey was just enough dragon for him. “Yeah. Can we?”

“Sure!” Joey grinned, stood up and leapt on Travis, knocking him hard to the ground and holding him there, hands on Travis’s shoulders. “I’ve never had a human friend before!”

Joey’s smile was infectious, and Travis couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ve never had a dragon friend before either.”

“This is going to be awesome!” Joey sat there for a minute as if expecting something, but then he got up, pulling Travis by the hand. “Come on, I’ll show you everything in the cave!”

Joey was not the dragon Travis had expected. He was better.


	3. It Is a Well Documented Fact that Dragons Don’t Give a Shit about Your Societal Norms

Hanging out with Joey was a lot of fun. Travis had been doing it for two days now and they were the best two days of his life. They chatted about everything, Travis told Joey all about humans and Joey told him all about dragons. Travis had learned so much about dragons. Apparently boy dragons were smaller than girl dragons and had to compete for mates, and dragon ladies liked piles of treasure, and that was why dragons hoarded treasure and stuff. 

Joey only knew one other dragon who looked like a human, and he could change back and forth whenever he wanted to, which was fucking awesome. It was probably a power Joey would have when he was older, he said. 

Besides that, he knew that dragons really liked to collect things and didn’t like to share, and they usually didn’t live to close to each other or they fought, which sounded lonely to Travis. But since he wasn’t a dragon, he could stay near Joey without any fighting, which was awesome. 

The whole thing was awesome, Travis loved it. 

He and Joey were kind of inseparable, partly because the cave wasn’t very big so it wasn’t like they could get away from each other, but also because they didn’t really want to get away from each other. They ate together and slept near each other and even went out to pee off the cliff together. After just two days, Travis was pretty sure that Joey was the best buddy he’d ever had. He was the kind of friend Travis could tell embarrassing stories to without fear that they’d be used against him later, or wrestle with without it being weird when they ended up on top of each other, or burp and scratch in front of without getting called gross. It was great.

“And then Cory said, ‘Travis, if you eat that, what are we going to feed the sheep?’”

Joey was tilting over laughing at Travis’s story, and he leaned against Travis’s shoulder as he did. Even Travis was laughing, though it hadn’t been funny when it had happened to him. “Didn’t it taste funny? I can’t believe you didn’t notice!”

“I was hungry!” Travis said, holding out an arm to demonstrate how hungry he’d been. He wasn’t hungry now, they’d just finished eating lunch. “It was just a misunderstanding.”

“You’re funny,” Joey said, still chuckling. He pulled away from Travis, then made a face and leaned back in, sniffing him. “You smell different today.”

“Do I?” Travis lifted up his arm and sniffed himself. 

“Yep.”

Oh. He did smell a bit bad. “I guess I need a bath,” he said, laughing nervously. Travis wasn’t necessarily the best at remembering to wash. And he may have…not bathed much since he’d left the orphanage. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay!” Joey leapt up, grinning. “We can wash together! Come on, I’ll show you where there’s a great pond.”

“Sure, okay.” Travis got up and followed Joey out of the cave. 

“It’s actually the only pond,” Joey told him as they headed off down the trail along the cliffside. “There’s another one kind of far away, but it’s kind of far away. This one is close, and it’s super nice! It’s really pretty and the water is clean and there’s a waterfall to play in. You’re going to love it, Travis, it’s awesome!”

Awesome was a word Travis had taught Joey, and he was very proud of that fact. He didn’t exactly know why Joey spoke Daolo if he was a dragon, and why he only spoke most of it instead of all of it, but there it was. There was probably a reason, if he asked. “I can’t wait to see it,” Travis said, smiling back because it was hard not to smile when Joey was. “It sounds great!”

Joey nodded and kept leading Travis along the path, banking suddenly into a cleft Travis wouldn’t have seen on his own, which lead to a treacherous decline full of loose rocks that Joey had no trouble not slipping on in his bare feet, which made Travis determined not to slip in his boots either. They got to the bottom without incident and Joey pulled him around a bend, under a stone arch and around another corner, and then Travis was nearly blinded. 

The pond was sparkling in the sunlight, water clear as light, rippling thanks to the promised waterfall, which reached up about ten feet, feeding the pond from what Travis assumed was snowmelt above. “It’s really pretty…” Travis said, looking at it in awe for a second. 

“Yeah!” Joey tugged at Travis, pulling him towards the water. “Come on, get in! You can’t wash on the shore!”

“Right,” Travis laughed. “Sure. Give me a second.” And he reached down, lifted his shirt over his head and tossed it aside, then sat to get his boots off.

Joey was staring at him like he’d grown a second head. “What…”

“What?” Travis asked, prying one boot free.

“How did you take your fur off like that?” Joey exclaimed, pointing at Travis’s discarded shirt. “Can all humans do that?”

“Yes?” Travis looked at his shirt, and then back at Joey, who wasn’t wearing any clothes. Right. “I told you before, it’s not fur. It’s just clothes. Humans wear them because we don’t have fur.”

“Where…” Joey seemed vaguely horrified as Travis removed his other boot. “Where do you get it?”

“We make it,” Travis hoped Joey didn’t ask more than that, because he had no idea how clothes were made. They just were. “Sometimes out of fur from animals, but not always.”

“Wow…” Joey was watching Travis raptly, clearly intending to observe the entire undressing process. “Why?”

“Um…” Travis stood up, started unlacing his pants. Having Joey stare at him was a bit awkward, but it wasn’t like he was shy. Even he was a dragon, Joey was a guy too. “So we don’t get cold, mostly? But also because we’re kind of supposed to. If you go around with no clothes on even when it’s hot, people glare at you and stuff.”

Joey nodded along, watching Travis’s pants as they hit the ground and he stepped out of them, kicking them aside, and then his eyes moved up to Travis’s smallclothes. “I won’t glare at you,” he promised.

Travis hadn’t been planning to strut around naked, but he smiled. “Thanks.” He dropped the smallclothes too, adding them to his pile of clothes. “Alright, let’s get in the water.”

“Yeah!” Joey was still kind of looking at Travis, mostly at Travis’s dick. Travis chose to believe that it was because he lived alone and had never seen another one before. Curiosity was pretty normal, after all.

The two of them darted into the water, which Travis regretted because he’d been right, this was definitely snowmelt water, and it was cold. But it didn’t seem to deter Joey and so Travis wasn’t going to let it get to him either, and he charged in with Joey, diving under the chest-deep water when Joey did.

Joey grabbed him under water and started to wrestle, and Travis giggled and grabbed him back, dunking Joey further under the surface in his effort to get up. They played really aggressively for a good while, chasing each other, splashing, making a lot of noise. Joey kept challenging him to sit under the waterfall for a long time, which Travis never did as long as Joey (Joey had practice, it wasn’t a fair contest). He also used his tail to grab Travis’s legs and win most of their wrestling matches, which was also cheating, but Travis never called him on it, even when Joey would jump on Travis’s back and demand rides around the pond when he won. 

It was fun. It was a lot more fun than baths usually were, and since Travis didn’t have any soap with him, he didn’t have much choice but to have fun. Eventually his toes started to go numb, so he dragged Joey out of the water. “We can come here again tomorrow,” he promised. “I just can’t feel my feet.”

“Okay…” Joey pouted, following Travis out of the water. When they were on the shore, he grinned and leapt onto Travis’s back. “Carry me back to the cave?”

“Oof!” Travis staggered, trying to right himself under Joey’s weight. He was heavier than he should be. Maybe it was the tail that was currently wrapping itself around Travis’s waist. “Joey…”

“You lost all the wrestling matches, now you have to carry me back,” Joey insisted, smug on Travis’s back. 

Travis sighed. He supposed that was far. “Okay, okay. Get down so I can put my clothes on and then I’ll carry you back?”

“Why?”

Travis blinked. “I thought you wanted me to carry you.”

“No, why do you have to put your clothes back on?” Joey asked, peering around Travis from behind.

“Uh…because I do?”

“It’s not cold and I’m not going to get mad,” Joey told him, quite reasonably. “Besides, they’re stinky and you’re clean. And I like you better like this, you look more like me.”

Travis…couldn’t argue against any of that. And he didn’t really have any particular attachment to clothes, really. They were just something he wore. “Well…okay.” He crouched, awkward with Joey on his back, and scooped them all up. They did stink a little bit. 

With effort, he stood again. “I’m going to be sweaty again by the time we get back,” he complained.

“Guess we’ll have to have a bath again tomorrow, then,” Joey said, resting his chin on Travis’s shoulder. “Let’s go!”

“I’m going, I’m going.” Travis started up the path that would take them to the cave, mostly focused on not dropping Joey or cutting his bare feet on the rock. 

“Hey,” Joey said, eyes pointed down. “Have you noticed that mine’s bigger than yours?”

Travis nearly dumped him on the ground right there. “Is it?” he asked, pretending he didn’t know. “I didn’t notice.”

“Yeah, and you’re bigger than me everywhere else, so it’s funny, is all.”

“Must be a dragon thing,” Travis gritted.

“I guess,” Joey said, smiling. His dragon thing was pressed right up against Travis’s back, which Travis couldn’t help but be aware of now. “Let’s eat when we get back, I’m hungry.”

“We just had lunch.”

“But I’m hungry again,” Joey repeated.

“Okay, okay.” Travis laughed, forgetting his annoyance. They were friends. Little things like clothes and size didn’t matter as long as they had fun.


	4. There Are a Few Basic Things Humans and Dragons Have in Common

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was bound to happen eventually.

Travis kind of liked sleeping on the ground. It wasn’t as uncomfortable as he thought it would be and it had the benefit of not having straw poking into him from his mattress at home. He found he could get to a place where he was really comfortable and didn’t want to move for fear he’d ruin it, though. 

Which was exactly the problem now. He’d woken up, comfortable as he ever was, the tiniest bit chilled because it wasn’t as warm at night. It wasn’t so bad he’d fished his blanket out of his bag yet, though. Joey slept completely exposed to the air with no problems, so Travis could too. 

He was so comfortable he didn’t want to move, but at the same time Travis kind of needed to get up, go outside and deal with the fact that part of him was harder than the rocks he was laying on.

And Travis wasn’t exaggerating, either. It actually kind of hurt, how hard he was. He didn’t remember what he’d been dreaming, but it better have been good to occasion this. 

_Okay_ , Travis thought to himself. _Time to get up._

He didn’t get up. 

He tried again, and just couldn’t convince his body to move even a little bit. He made a sad noise there on the cave floor. Usually he got up, went outside and dealt with this at the cliff when he needed to, just because it seemed more polite that way. But he really just…didn’t want to get up. 

There was a quiet shuffle beside him as Joey adjusted in his sleep, breathing heavily. The thing was that he always slept right there beside Travis, curled up, though on the nights when it was warmer he tended to uncurl and take up space, his arms or tail ending up on Travis’s chest or legs. Which didn’t bother Travis at all, he was used to sleeping in close quarters with other people, but it did serve to remind Travis that this wasn’t his space to do what he wanted in, even if Joey had told him to make himself at home. 

But…he really didn’t want to get up.

Travis sighed, and just to see what would happen, he reached down and gave himself a touch. He immediately felt better, but also more urgently like he should be doing something important with this. 

Travis cast a quick glance at Joey, framed by low moonlight. Joey was pretty okay with everything else Travis did, and he was a boy too, so he’d probably understand. They’d never actually talked about this, but Travis decided they’d been naked friends for three days, so that probably meant that now they were at the point in their friendship where it was okay for him to touch himself without going outside and it wasn’t going to be weird. Especially if Joey slept through the whole thing and it never became an issue. 

With that ideal situation in mind, Travis started stroking himself, wanting to get this over with. He’d never been the patient type when it came to this stuff, but he did sometimes try to go a little slow. But tonight he hurt, and he wanted to not be hard anymore, and he wanted to go back to sleep on the comfortable cave floor, and this was a vehicle to make all of that happen. 

It was going to be a very short ride down this road, Travis could tell already, and that was fine with him. He wasn’t even thinking of anything in particular and he was still almost there. He made a little noise of urgency as he sped up, happy shocks coursing through his body. 

He didn’t notice Joey shifting beside him, not until he’d rolled over, gotten up on his knees. “Travis? What are you…oh!”

“Joey!”

It was too late, Joey was leaning over him, and Travis couldn’t put a tornado back in a bottle, and even in the dim light from the moon Travis could easily see that his cum, when he came out of surprise at hearing Joey’s voice, hit Joey right in the face. 

Travis was too dumbstruck, and too dumb, to do anything to move, to point himself somewhere else, to do anything but spurt the rest of his load right up onto Joey’s face. On the other hand, Joey didn’t seem smart enough to move either, and just let Travis paint him, probably shocked. 

They were silent for a second, and Travis wished the cave would come crashing down on his head. “I’m so sorry!” he said, sitting up and casting around for something to clean up with. But of course nothing came to his hand. “Oh, fuck, I’m sorry, Joey, I should have gone outside, I didn’t mean, I’m so sorry…” He could feel his friendship with Joey breaking into pieces. Travis didn’t think that there were friendships that could survive cumming on a guy’s face by accident. That was pretty bad. He was going to cry.

But then he heard a sound he wasn’t expecting to hear. A giggle.

Joey was laughing.

“Um…”

“You shoot a lot,” Joey giggled, wiping his face with his arm. “I guess I should have been more careful about where I stuck my face, huh?”

“I…sorry?”

Another laugh. “It’s okay. I didn’t think you knew about touching yourself, so I didn’t think to be careful.”

“I…” Travis was trying to orient himself here. “I do. I’m a guy. You know…?” He couldn’t finish the sentence. 

“Course I do,” Joey said, his silhouette reaching down and grabbing himself. “I got one of those too.” He started stroking his as he spoke. Travis was grateful for the dark because it stopped him from having to see exactly how big Joey was hard. “I just always…saw you in the mornings and stuff, and you…ng…never did anything about it, so I was worried you didn’t know how…”

“I…” Travis swallowed, trying to figure out what to say. “I’ve been going outside, at night when you’re sleeping. I just…didn’t tonight.”

Another chuckle. “Humans are weird. Do you all touch yourselves outside?”

“No, just…”

“Ah…” Joey interrupted Travis by leaning forward a little, letting out a high-pitched sound and pumping himself hard. A second later Travis felt it, something hot splattering his belly and chest, coating him in dragon cum. “There,” Joey panted. “Now we’re even. Sort of. I missed your face, didn’t I?”

“Uh…yeah.” Travis didn’t know what to do. He caught himself starting to laugh and let it happen. “Next time, I guess?”

Another giggle from Joey. “Maybe I’ll try in the day, my aim will be better.”

“Okay.” Travis was grinning like an idiot. “I never thought I’d find a friend I could cum on and still talk to.”

Not that he’d been looking for one, or anything.

“I never thought I’d find a friend,” Joey said, before breaking into a yawn. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“Yeah.” Joey’s yawn was contagious, and when Travis recovered form his, he lay back down as well, Joey curling up beside him. “Me too.” He’d moved out of his comfortable position after all that, but Travis didn’t mind. “Goodnight, Joey.”

“Goodnight, Travis. See you in the morning.” The tone of voice promised it would be a good morning for both of them.

“Yeah,” Travis said, nodding off. “I’ll see you.”

He woke up with Joey’s tail on his chest.


	5. If a Dragon Likes You, You’ll Know Because He Won’t Let You Leave

A few things changed between Travis and Joey after the whole ‘oops I came on your face’ adventure that night. 

The first and most obvious was that the two of them went from being just buddies to being jerk off buddies. In the morning when they woke up, before the went to sleep and usually at least once during the day. Keeping up with Joey wasn’t the easiest thing, but Travis tried. They usually sat or lay beside each other, or something facing each other, and played with themselves together. 

Whenever possible, Joey ended up shooting on Travis. He thought it was funny. Travis was worried he was going to smell like dragon cum forever. But he got Joey back most of the time, at least.

The second thing was that what few boundaries had existed between them seemed to have disappeared. Joey sat pressed right up against him, sometimes even on him, jumped on his back and demanded to be carried, held his hand, stole food right out of his hand and ate it as if challenging him to steal it back. He’d started sleeping cuddled up next to Travis too, and unconsciously followed Travis if he moved away. Not that Travis was moving away, he liked the contact just fine. They went everywhere together, more than they even had before. Joey wouldn’t even go pee off the cliff without taking Travis with him. 

The third thing was Joey’s tail. Where before he’d always let it swing behind him or wrap it around his waist when he walked, he’d suddenly developed a tendency to wrap it around Travis’s waist, or his leg, or his wrist. Every time he was idle, Joey’s tail ended up wrapped around Travis, as if to keep him in place. He even did it when they were jerking off together sometimes, as if Travis was going to run off. 

Thinking about it, maybe the second and third things were the same thing. And maybe the first thing was part of it too. Maybe it was three things that were actually one thing. One giant thing that was Joey just wanting to be near Travis all the time.

Nothing else was different. They still talked about everything, laughed about everything, got along wonderfully, joked and played and hung out and were best friends. Just now they did it while touching a lot more. Travis had never had this kind of friendship with anyone before and he loved it. 

But he did wonder about all the touching, so he one day while he and Joey were on their way to the pond to clean off, he asked. “Hey, Joey?”

“Yeah?” Joey looked up at him, smiling. They were holding hands, Joey’s tail around Travis’s waist as they walked. 

Travis smiled back. “What’s with your tail lately?”

“What about it?”

“Well…” Travis pointed with his free hand. “It’s always wrapped around me all of the sudden, is all.”

“Oh,” Joey sounded unsure, and his tail started to withdraw. “I can stop. Sorry.”

“No, no!” Travis reached down, kept the tail in place. “It’s fine.” He hadn’t meant to make Joey feel bad. “I’m just curious, is all.” 

“I, um…” Joey was red in the face. “I didn’t notice I was doing it, actually,” he muttered. “I guess I just…want to keep you close, is all.”

Travis chuckled, and put his arm around Joey in a side-hug. “We’re about as close as two people can get!”

“Yeah,” Joey said, laughing with him. “Let’s stay that way?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I…don’t want you to go, Travis.”

Travis looked down at Joey. “Go where? I’m not going anywhere.”

“I mean…” Joey bit his lip, exhaled. “Dragons like to…keep things, that we like. Hoard things.”

“Yeah,” Travis said, nodding. Everyone knew that. Joey had even shown Travis his hoard, which was a small pile of coloured rocks, a bat skull and a single gold coin he’d stolen from his sire’s pile. It was super cool. 

“Yeah,” Joey said, looking away.

Travis frowned, wondering why Joey was making that face. He thought about it, about what Joey had just said, and it came to him, finally. “Oh! You’re hoarding me too?”

Joey nodded. 

“That’s so cool!” Travis said, whooping a little. “Wow, that means you really like me, right? Thanks, Joey, that’s so nice of you!” That Joey liked Travis as much as Travis liked Joey was awesome to hear. 

Joey smiled, but still looked nervous. “What’s wrong?”

Without warning, Joey tugged on Travis, brought him toppling to the ground, the tail pulling him around. Travis yelped his surprise and ended up flat on his back with Joey on top of him, looking down. “I want…you to stay here forever, Travis. With me.” Joey’s eyes were sharper than usual, maybe a little yellow. Predatory, almost. 

Travis smiled up at him. “Joey…”

“I’m serious. I really like you. Stay here? Please?”

Travis looked up at. Joey wasn’t joking. He was really asking Travis to just stay up here, live with him, forever. 

And Travis couldn’t think of a single reason not to. So he smiled, nodded. “Okay. I will, Joey.”

Joey’s expression softened. “Seriously.”

“Yeah!” Travis grinned at him. “You’re my best buddy. And besides, I’m part of your hoard now, right? I can’t leave without breaking up your collection.”

Joey laughed, sounding a little relieved. “Thank you so much! You’re…Travis, thank you.”

Travis leaned up, and since Joey was right there, he kissed Joey right on the mouth. Joey just sat there, let him do it, and looked at Travis, confused, when Travis stopped. “Uh…did I have food in my teeth?”

“No, silly,” Travis giggled. “It was a kiss. That’s what humans do when they really like someone and want to stay with them.” 

“Oh.” Joey leaned down, and he kissed Travis again, roughly, his teeth involved. He was really bad at it. But then, Travis didn’t imagine he was much better. “Like that?”

“Yeah,” Travis said, noting that Joey’s tail was around his wrist. “Just like that.”


	6. Dragons Are Solitary, but They Still Have Friends

Travis and Joey were wrestling on the floor of the cave. Not an uncommon game for them, but this time was different. 

This time Travis was winning.

He’d figured out some of Joey’s most common tactics and was able to deal with them now. When Joey had wrapped his tail around Travis’s leg at the beginning, Travis had squeezed his legs together and kept them that way to hold it there so he couldn’t wrap it around Travis’s middle later. Joey was stronger than him, so instead of pushing back when Joey pushed, Travis pulled, making them fall over and turning so that he landed on top. 

After that, it was a simple matter of getting Joey’s arms and pinning him, though Joey didn’t make it easy, wrapping his legs around Travis’s waist and trying to roll them over, making frustrated little growling noises when Travis didn’t let him. 

The simple matter of getting Joey’s arms was made harder by how strong Joey was, but Travis managed it, getting one and then the other, holding them down against the ground, trying to pull them above Joey’s head. “I got you,” he grunted.

“No…you don’t…” Joey growled, still trying to break free. 

Travis smirked, holding fast. From his position, Joey couldn’t move that well. No matter how much he squirmed, he was going to have to give in eventually. Their bodies pressed against each other, they writhed on the floor for a while. They were both hard and every so often a nice feeling would come of that, but Travis was mostly focused on winning right now. 

Managing to get Joey’s hands above his head, Travis grinned in triumph. “Come on, surrender.”

“No,” Joey insisted, squirming harder, increasing the movement between their bodies, and the good feelings coming from that. Judging by the little noise Joey made, Travis wasn’t the only one who noticed, and Joey kept doing that, eyes on Travis. Travis moved back, not able to help himself, watching Joey, keeping his hands in place, refusing to let go until Joey admitted defeat.

They kept going like that, doing something that wasn’t quite wrestling anymore, for a few minutes. Joey started to growl more and more, and suddenly he reared up and bit Travis on the shoulder. “Ow!” It didn’t hurt that bad, Travis was just surprised.

Joey fell back, eyes wide. “Sorry! I don’t…know why I did that.”

“It’s okay,” Travis laughed, grinding hard against Joey. “If you’d just surrender, I’d let you go.”

“Not surrendering. Dragons don’t surrender.”

“Then dragons stay pinned to the floor all day.”

“You can’t hold out that long.”

“Can too.” 

A shadow fell over the cave, then disappeared, and there was a whoosh of wind. Both of them froze. “What was that?” Travis asked.

“It…I think someone flew in front of the cave.”

“Someone?”

Joey nodded, looking over to the entrance. “Get off.”

Travis did as he was told, standing and pulling Joey to his feet. “I still won,” he said.

“No. I was about to push you off.”

“You’re full of it. I had you.”

Joey gave him a look, before heading for the cave entrance. “We’ll call it a tie.”

“But it wasn’t!”

“Hey runt, that you in there?” 

Travis blinked at the voice calling out from the mountainside. But Joey broke into a smile, nearly leaping in place. “Yeah, I’m in here!” He hurried to the cave entrance, and around the side came another boy, taller and leaner and narrower than Joey, dark hair broken by black horns, the scales on his tail holding a greenish sheen. Unlike Joey he had wings on his back, black streaked with vivid green, which held Travis’s attention for a good few seconds until Joey leaped on him with a shout as if to knock him over.

The new boy laughed and easily got Joey in a headlock, grinning and holding him in place. It wasn’t until that happened that Travis noticed that he was also stark naked and got for himself some confirmation that yes, being big was just a dragon thing. Joey was growling at him in a friendly way. “And you still suck,” he said.

The new boy looked up suddenly, saw Travis standing there, and he blinked. “Oh, hey.” He let Joey go, nearly dropping him. Joey backed away, rubbing his neck. “You found a human?”

“He found me.” Joey sounded a little defensive. “Travis, this is…” Just like Joey’s name, it was a series of sounds that Travis couldn’t replicate. 

“Louis?” Travis asked, trying, and feeling bad because that wasn’t even close.

“Close enough,” Louis laughed, approaching Travis, peering at him carefully. “Huh. Never seen a human up close before. Thought you’d be bigger.”

“That’s what I said about dragons,” Travis said, trying not to feel like a spider under glass. One of the monks at the orphanage had used to study spiders and would put them in little glass things to see them better and it had been weird and Travis had always felt bad for the spiders. 

Louis snorted. “Just because you’ve only seen the runt. The rest of us are more impressive.” 

“Joey’s impressive.” Joey had been sidling over and as Travis said that, his tail wrapped around Travis’s waist, his fingers lacing through Travis’s. “We’re friends.”

“So I see,” Louis said, and he reached out and gave Travis an experimental poke on the shoulder, right under the bite mark. 

Joey growled at him. “Mine.”

Travis felt funny about that. Not a bad funny, just warm and fuzzy.

“Okay, okay.” Louis backed off, smiling. “Yours. I wanted to see how you were doing on your own. I didn’t know your sire kicked you out until I went looking for you a while ago and he just growled at me and made me go away. Told me you were gone.”

“Uh, yeah.” Joey smiled. “Told me I was too old for him to take care of me.” 

Louis gave a shrug. “You are. Took me forever to find you. Since you’re so small.” That was with a playful grin and he gave Joey a shove.

Joey shoved back. “Just because you’re dumb and don’t know how to look,” he shot back. “I wasn’t hiding.”

Louis bared his fangs. “Careful, I’m bigger than you.”

“So’s Travis, and I just beat him in wrestling.”

Travis narrowed his eyes. “You did not.”

“We got interrupted.”

“Yeah, I see that,” Louis joked, looking down at Joey’s boner. Travis’s had partly faded, but Joey was still at full strength. “You really are growing up, finally.”

“Shut up,” Joey said, with another shove.

“You know,” Louis said, looking thoughtfully at Travis. “Your sire has a human too.”

“He…” Joey blinked. “He does?”

“Well, that’s what I hear, anyway. Someone said he flew off a while ago, came back with a human, hasn’t come out of his cave since.”

“The princess,” Travis said, straightening. He looked at Joey. “I…came here because everyone was looking for the dragon who kidnapped the princess.” 

“You…you mean my sire kidnapped the princess?” Joey asked, looking a little stricken. 

“Well, I don’t know…” Travis admitted, shrugging. “But maybe.”

“But that means there’s guys with swords looking for him. What if they find him?”

“Hey,” Louis said, punching Joey’s arm. “Your sire’ll fry them, that’s what’ll happen if they find him.”

“Yeah…” Joey said, nodding. He didn’t sound convince. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess that’s why he kicked me out. There wasn’t room for three of us in there.” 

“Hey,” Travis said, squeezing Joey’s hand. “There would never have been room for four of us.”

Joey looked at him, eyes going a bit wide, and he grinned, hugged Travis. “You’re right. It’s better this way.”

“I wanted to brag about my hoard,’ Louis said, crossing his arms. “But it’s just some junk and you’ve already got a human. I guess even the runt wins sometimes.”

“Yep, you can’t top what I’ve got here,” Joey bragged, arms around Travis as he looked at Louis. His horns were brushing Travis’s face. “Even my sire’s is nothing compared to this.”

Louis snorted. “We should go hunting sometime, now that I know where you are.”

“Yeah!” Joey grinned. “Sure. Travis can come too!”

“Sure,” Louis agreed. “If he can keep up.”

“I can.”

“Sure you can. Tomorrow?”

“Deal.”

Louis nodded. “See you then. I’m off. Your cave is too small. Just like you.”

Joey snapped his jaw. Louis laughed, and headed out of the cave. He waved over his shoulder, kept walking right to the ledge, where he just jumped right off, and a moment later a big black and green dragon rose from the cliffside, flying off to the north. 

Joey sighed when he was gone, arms still around Travis. “He’s my best friend,” he said, looking up at Travis. “We grew up together.”

“He’s got wings,” Travis said, sliding his arms around Joey too. “How come you don’t have wings?”

Pulling a face, Joey’s tail moved down, around Travis’s leg. “Mine will grow in someday,” he said, a little defensive.

“Okay. Are you worried about your sire?”

“No,” Joey said, shaking his head. “He’ll be fine, Louis is right.” 

“Yeah, probably.” Travis wasn’t so sure. There were a lot of people looking for the princess, from what he’d heard.

“What I’m worried about is our tie.”

“You mean my victory?”

“Nope.” Joey tugged, but Travis anticipated him and pushed, and Joey ended up on his back with Travis on top of him again. “Hey!”

“Admit defeat.” Travis grabbed Joey’s arms again. 

“Never,” Joey growled, moving his hips to try and get away, rubbing himself against Travis again. He was still hard and Travis was rapidly getting there again. 

“Fine,” Travis said, grinning. He leaned down and kissed Joey. “New rule. Whoever cums, forfeits.” 

Joey grinned back, moving his hips just like Travis was. Either way, they were both going to win. “Deal.”


	7. Pretty Much Everything Is a Competition with Dragons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which possessiveness takes perhaps predictable forms.

The mountain goat was sitting there, munching on some grass that was growing in a crack in the ground. 

Travis swallowed, lifting up his knife, prepared to leap. Beside him, Joey crouched, arms out. They book took a step forward. Travis kicked a pebble by accident. The mountain goat looked up, made to leap away.

A glut of flame hit it from above and Travis jumped back in alarm. When the fire died down, they heard laughter. Standing there on a perch a dozen feet above them was Louis. “I win.”

“It wasn’t a contest!” Joey called, glaring. 

Travis was mostly just trying to figure out how a dragon the size of a house had escaped his notice, fried a goat and turned back into something person-shaped to laugh at them. “Of course it was!”

“And you cheated!” Travis told him, giving Louis the eye. “Breathing fire is cheating.”

Louis leapt from the perch and landed on the ground between them and charred remains of the goat, hand bracing himself as he stood, grinning at them. His wings were flared out, and he folded them only slowly. “Why is it cheating?” he asked innocently. “It’s how dragons hunt.”

“Yeah, but me and Joey can’t do it.”

“That’s not my fault,’ Louis said, turning to wander over to the goat. “Lucky for you two losers I’m super nice. I’ll share with you.” 

Joey looked like he wanted to refuse, face set in a scowl. Travis put a hand on his shoulder. “I am kind of hungry…”

With a huff, Joey relented. “Fine. But we totally could have caught that on our own. I catch goats all the time.” 

“I know,” Travis said. He’d seen Joey do it. “But sometimes you can let your friends do something nice for you, right?”

“Dragons don’t do nice things for each other,” Joey grumbled. “He’s doing it because it shows he’s a better hunter than me.”

Travis hadn’t thought of it like that. He guessed it made sense—Louis and Joey seemed to compete at every opportunity in a way that Travis had never seen friends compete before. But it didn’t seem to stop them from liking each other, either. “I think it’s at least partly because he wants to help you,” Travis persisted. “Otherwise he could have fried the goat before we got near it. He waited until it was about to run away.”

Joey slowed his step, looking up at Travis, then over at Louis, with a frown. “I didn’t think of that. Maybe you’re right.”

Travis shrugged. He just didn’t think that everything was competition and rivalry, no matter what Joey said. How could they do that and still be friends? But then, maybe that was him assuming that dragons had to act human since they looked human. “Anyway, I’m hungry.”

“Yeah. Okay, let’s eat, then,” Joey said. 

Louis was crouched in front of the goat, tearing into it with his hands. He smiled up at them, holding up hunks of meat. “Lunch?”

“Thank you,” Travis said, taking one, and noticing that Louis reached out to hand it to him but made Joey take it out of his hands. It was hot, and he tried not to wince when it touched his hand. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“I ate a few other goats while you earthbound losers were chasing this one,” Louis told him. “I’m good.”

“How does that work?” Travis asked, looking Louis over and frowning. “Like, you eat three goats whole, but then you turn back into human shape and…what happens to the goats?”

“First of all,” Louis said, poking Travis in the belly. “I don’t have a human shape, all my shapes are dragon shapes. Don’t be racist.”

“Uh…” Travis coloured. “Sorry. You turn smaller.” 

“That’s better. And second.” Louis closed his mouth and seemed to consider. “I don’t know, and now I’m really worried about that, so thanks.”

“This is what I would be worried about if I could change shape,” Travis said. 

“Maybe the goats also change shape?” Joey suggested. “And they get really small.”

“Maybe.” Louis knocked shoulders with Travis. “Damn it, I can’t stop thinking about that. You suck. Why does Joey keep you?”

“I don’t know, ask him.”

“I’m asking you!”

Joey stood up suddenly, stepped over Louis and sat back down in Travis’s lap, tail wrapped around Travis’s waist. “Because he’s _mine_ ,” he said pointedly, glaring at Louis.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes.”

Travis had a feeling that something had happened that he’d missed.

Louis and Joey held each other’s gazes for a long moment, Joey tense in Travis’s lap, like he was about to jump. 

Then Louis stood up. “I’m going to go fly for a few minutes,” he said, stretching like nothing had happened. “Try and clear my head from the goat problem. I’ll be back.”

And he walked to the edge of the cliff, jumped off, and flew away in his bigger form. 

“You okay?” Travis asked, after he was gone.

“Yes.” Joey wiggled a bit, nestling into Travis’s lap and chewing on his meat. Travis took a bite out of his own, wishing it tasted like something. 

“You sound not okay.”

Joey huffed, and just sat there and ate. When he was done, he wiped his hands on his chest and put his arms around Travis, turning so they were chest to chest. Travis put his food down and hugged Joey back. 

“It’s just…I don’t like the way Louis was talking to you, that’s all.”

“He was being friendly,” Travis said, surprised. “What’s wrong?”

Joey growled something hard to make out, burying his face in Travis’s chest. 

Travis frowned. “Are you…jealous?”

Joey wrapped his legs around Travis’s waist now. “You’re _my_ friend,” he muttered. 

“Does that mean I’m not allowed to talk to other people?” Travis asked, not sure how he felt about that.

“No, you can do what you want. Just…he was trying to take you.” 

“He was?”

“Yes.”

Well, Travis couldn’t tell Joey he didn’t know how dragons thought. That hadn’t been how he interpreted what had happened, but that didn’t mean Joey was wrong. “I wouldn’t have gone with him. I like you.”

“You’re mine,” Joey repeated, red in the face. “And I like you too.”

“I already promised I wasn’t going to leave you, didn’t I?” Travis asked, rubbing Joey’s back. “I meant that.”

Joey nodded, looking up. “I believe you. I would have fought him if he tried.”

Travis had a feeling Joey wouldn’t win, but he smiled. “I don’t think he’ll try. Do you want to make sure he knows that I belong to you?”

Joey got redder. “Yes…”

“Bite me again.”

“Bite…” 

“Like you did the other day.” The mark Joey had given him had healed by now. “That was you marking me as yours, right?” Travis wasn’t the smartest cookie, but he could figure that much out. 

“Well…yes.” Joey cleared his throat. “I didn’t do it on purpose, though. It just…happened.”

Travis smiled, loosening his hold on Joey. “Do it on purpose this time.”

Joey looked up at him for a second, teeth showing as he bit his lip. And then he nodded, leaned forward, and put his mouth to Travis’s collarbone. And he bit down, breaking Travis’s skin. Travis grunted in pain, tensing against it. It wasn’t that bad. “Your teeth are sharp.”

“They’re fangs,” Joey muttered, looking at his handiwork. He put his hand over it, smiling. 

Travis, meanwhile, was getting hard, which wasn’t helped by the fact that Joey was too. Joey grinned. “Maybe I should mark you a bit more, just to be extra-sure.”

“You want to bite me again?” Travis asked, finding that a bit funny. 

“Yeah.” Joey nodded. “And I’m going to cum on you.”

Travis laughed. “Really?”

Joey nodded again, serious as he started moving his hips, rubbing the two of them together, getting them fully hard. “Then you’ll smell like me again.”

Travis’s smile faded. “Wait. You always cum on me.”

“Yeah.”

“Does that…have you been marking me this whole time?”

Joey looked up at him, eyes wide. “You usually cum on me too.”

And now Travis felt his face heat up all at once. “That wasn’t…oh.” Apparently he’d been marking Joey the whole time too. Well that was…fine with him, now that he thought about it. “Well…okay, we don’t have that long before Louis gets back. Let’s do it.”

Joey’s smile turned predatory, and he grinded harder. “Okay.”

Using Travis as leverage, Joey rubbed them together, leaning forward and biting the other side of Travis’s neck. Travis found that he liked the way that paired with the feeling of Joey’s hardness pressing against him, so he did the first thing he thought of. He reached down into the space between their bodies and wrapped his hand around both himself and Joey, stroking them both roughly, taking Joey’s grunt as approval to do it. 

Joey bit Travis again, and again, and moved to the other side of his neck and bit him there, biting marks into Travis, marking him as his, proving that Travis was his. And when he tensed up in Travis’s lap, Travis sat there and let his dragon shoot all up his chest, marking him further.

Travis marked back, though. When Joey was finished shooting, Travis pointed their dicks the other way, and a second later he shot as well, splattering Joey. And for good measure, he leaned down and bit into Joey’s shoulder, just enough to leave mark there. 

Joey made a little noise, and then the two of them sat there, breathing for a bit. “There,” Travis said, swallowing. “I think you’ve made your point.”

“For now…” Joey muttered, kissing Travis quickly before looking up, over to the side. Louis was sitting there, picking at the goat, waiting. Joey just fixed him with a look while Travis went red and wondered how long he’d been there.

Louis looked back, smiling. “Okay, I get it. Yours.”

“Damn right,” Joey growled, standing up and going over to the goat, knocking shoulders with Louis, who knocked back. “Don’t forget.”

“We’ll see. I might challenge you anyway.” 

Travis figured he had two choices here. He could sit here and be embarrassed about being covered in cum and bites, some of which were bleeding, or he could just go with it. This was how dragons were, and if he didn’t want to be the odd one out, he’d have to roll with it.

So Travis stood up, wondered over to get some more meat. And he knocked Louis’s other shoulder as he did. “You’d have to fight me too. I already have a dragon.” His. He liked that. His dragon. 

Louis snorted. “I could take you.”

“Doesn’t count if you cheat.”

“You going to eat, or you going to pick fights?”

Travis tore off some meat, smiling at Joey around Louis’s front. “We’ll catch our own next time.”

“Yeah.”

Louis laughed, shaking his head. “You two are so funny.” 

“Figured out where the goat went yet?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.”

Travis thought he was doing just fine up here with the dragons.


	8. Living with Dragons Makes Certain Things Inevitable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite being all innocent and fluffy, these two get it on a lot.

“You lost.”

“I know.” Travis sighed, got down where Joey was pointing. “Like this?”

“Perfect.” Joey grinned, sat back with his legs spread, hand around his dick, pointed right at Travis’s face. “Hold still.”

“I know, I know.” That had been the deal when they’d wrestled in the pond just now. Whoever lost had to sit there and let the winner cum on him. 

Since Travis knew now that Joey cumming on him was a mark of ownership, the terms seemed a lot more important than when it had just been a funny game. He didn’t mind. He kind of…liked it? In a funny way. He liked Joey claiming to own him. Plus he came on Joey a lot too, so he guessed the owning was mutual.

It was, Travis was increasingly realizing, not a normal friendship that they had. Normal friends didn’t cum on each other and kiss and hold hands and get possessive about each other. That seemed more like something that was done with a lover rather than a friend. 

And now Travis was wondering if maybe he loved Joey. 

But he wasn’t sitting around getting upset about it or anything. He smiled up at Joey, noting that his dick looked even bigger up close like this. “You know you can just shoot on me when you want? You don’t have to go through the whole thing of having a contest over it.”

“I know,” Joey said, as he started stroking himself. “But I also like winning.”

Travis liked winning too, so he shrugged. “Hey, let me do it.”

“You can’t! You lost.”

“No, no. I mean…” Travis nodded at Joey’s erection. “Let me jerk you off.” 

“Oh.” Joey stopped his hand, looking down at Travis. “Why?”

Travis shrugged again. “Because you won?” He wasn’t really sure why he wanted to do it. He just did. It seemed like something people did for the people they loved.

“Uh…okay.” Joey took his hand away, leaned back. “But you have to point it at your face. No cheating.”

“No cheating,” Travis promised, reaching out to take Joey’s heft in his hand. Wow, there was a lot of it. And it was really hot. Which Travis had known, because he’d touched it before, but somehow he’d never noticed.

He held it for a second, getting used to it, then Travis nodded to himself, and started jerking Joey off. Travis stroked Joey for a few minutes, slowly to warm up, then started to go faster, getting some swallowed noises out of Joey. He got up on his elbows and took it in both hands, keeping it pointed at his face—fair was fair—and started to go at it much faster, using his thumb to tease around the swollen head. 

Travis watched as fluid started to collect on Joey’s head, smeared around as Travis worked. Joey was flushed now, panting, and moving his hips a little, thrusting his dick right into Travis’s face, almost touching him a few times. Travis had leaned in when he wasn’t paying attention, and his breath was hitting Joey as he jerked him off, faster now. 

One particularly hard thrust of Joey’s had his dick brushing Travis’s lips, smearing some fluid there. Travis licked it off because it was there, only realizing what it was after he had. And well, it didn’t taste that had. 

And suddenly he was struck with an amazing idea. One that wouldn’t end with his face being painted, which was okay by him.

So he ducked his head down a little, and took the top of Joey’s dick in his mouth, still jerking him off with both hands, but now sucking a little on him as well. Joey cried out, which Travis took a sign that he liked it. So he sucked harder, letting more of Joey into his mouth, moving his hand down to accommodate it. He’d never really thought about doing this before, but it wasn’t such a big deal, Travis thought.

And then Joey moaned, went still and started to shoot right into Travis’s mouth. And wow, there was a lot of it, and wow, it was hot. And wow, Joey shot hard, right into the back of Travis’s throat. He choked a little on the first bit, coughing it up, but then managed to start swallowing since that was the only way to deal with it. It tasted funny, hot and sharp, but not in a way Travis didn’t like. 

He didn’t manage to swallow it all, a lot dribbling down his chin, but when Joey was finished shooting Travis pulled off, wiping his mouth and smiling up at him. 

“Travis…wow.” Joey panted, looking up at the sky. “Wow. Do that again.”

“Right now?”

Joey blinked, looking down at him. “Well. No. I guess not. But I definitely want you to do that again.” But then he frowned. “It didn’t go on your face.”

“It went _in_ my face,” Travis protested.

“I guess.” Joey narrowed his eyes. “I’m shooting on your face later. You can take it out of your mouth right before I cum next time.”

Travis laughed, sitting up. “Okay. I’m glad you liked it.”

Joey nodded. “A lot. I’ll show you later.”

“I’m hard now.” Travis was, and throbbing a bit.

“Yeah, but you lost the wrestling and you cheated, so you don’t get to cum until later.” Joey grinned at him, and together they stood up. “What did it taste like?” 

Travis leaned down and kissed Joey, sticking his tongue in Joey’s mouth for a second, since he knew some of Joey’s cum was still in there. “Like that,” he said, pulling back.

Joey nodded, swallowing. “Weird flavour. But I guess it’s okay.”

They started the trek away from the pond, up the path to the cave, holding hands. “I never realized how much you could shoot,” Travis said as they climbed. “I feel like I don’t need lunch.”

“I’m eating your share.”

“I was joking.”

“I’m eating your share anyway. I’ll feed you more of this if you’re still hungry.”

“Joey!” As much of it as there had been, Travis didn’t think he could subsist just on Joey’s cum.

Joey laughed. “I guess I can’t if I’m going to shoot it on your face. I’ll share the food.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you hear that?”

Travis didn’t, but he stopped talking and listened. All he heard was wind. “No, what?”

“There’s something…” They got to the top of the path, and now were on cliff that led to the cave. Joey crept forward, peering down. “There’s someone down there.”

Travis followed him, looking as well. “Oh. Wow.”

It was a convoy of what looked like knights, walking a path lower down in the mountains. There were about twenty people, with a lady in the head of the column. “Knights.” He couldn’t make out any details from here, but that was obviously what they were. 

And as soon as he said it out loud, Travis realized why they must be here.

Joey’s hand tightened around his. “They're here to look for the princess,” he said quietly, swallowing. His tail was swishing back and forth. “The one my sire has.”

“Yeah.”

“They’re going to…they’re going to attack him if they find him.” Joey’s voice was distant.

“I’m sure he’ll be okay,” Travis said. Louis had seemed pretty sure.

“Yeah…” Joey closed his mouth, watching the knights go by. They were far enough down that they wouldn’t see the two of them. “I want to go visit him.”

“Your sire?” 

Joey nodded. “I want to warn him they’re coming, at least. Maybe he’ll give the princess back. I…I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“Okay.” Travis pulled Joey away from the ledge, and hugged him. “We’ll go warn him then. It’ll be cool to meet him.”

Joey nodded into Travis’s shoulder. “He’s nice. You’ll like him. He’s big and scaly, like you hoped I’d be.”

Travis chuckled. “I’m sure he’s not as cool as you. It’s going to be okay.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I love you,” Travis said, on impulse. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe he just wanted to make Joey feel better. 

Joey pulled away from the hug, looked up at Travis curiously. “What does that mean?’

Travis blinked, hands still on Joey’s shoulders. “Uh…I don’t really know,” he said honestly, blushing. “Just…it’s an extra kind of liking you. Like, a whole lot, forever.”

Joey smiled. “Then I love you too, Travis.”

Now Travis grinned, and he hugged Joey again. “Let’s go eat. We can leave to see your sire as soon as you’re ready.”

“Yeah.” Joey nodded, not moving, arms and tail around Travis. “I’ve got everything I need right here.”


	9. Travelling with a Dragon Is a Slightly Different Experience

The hill was very steep. Which wasn’t so much a problem, except that it was also really long, and they’d been climbing it for a long time. 

“It’s not much farther,” Joey panted, as they hiked up it. 

Hiking up a steep mountain hill barefoot was not something Travis had ever expected to do, and he was kind of wishing he’d stopped to put his boots back on. But he’d gotten so used to not wearing them that when he’d been packing up before they left, all he’d thought it important to take was the food they had, his knife, a blanket and Joey’s hoard, which he didn’t want to leave alone, just in case someone came by and stole it. He had a set of clothes with him for when they got there, because he thought it might be a bad idea to be bare-ass naked if he was going to meet a princess, but he hadn’t though to pack his boots.

It was fine. Joey was doing it, so Travis could do it too. “You’ve been saying that since we left,” he complained. 

“Yeah.” Joey nodded, tail dragging. “But I just mean this hill. We’re almost at the top. And when we get there, we’ll be almost to my sire’s cave. I remember this hill.”

“Yeah?” They’d been walking for a few days now, because Joey didn’t quite remember how to get to his sire’s cave. He said when he’d left, he’d been so upset that he’d just run for a long time, and not paid attention to where he was going. 

“Uh-huh,” Joey said. “I was running and I didn’t realize how steep it was. So I tripped and fell down the whole way.” 

Travis stopped walking, looked over his shoulder down the length of the hill, which they’d been climbing for over an hour. “Are you okay?”

Picturing Joey rolling down this whole thing was painful. It was a miracle Joey hadn’t broken something.

“I’m fine,” Joey said, stopping as well. “I bruised my tail. But it was a while ago.”

“Okay,” Travis said, panting. Now that they’d stopped, he didn’t want to start again. “Can we take a break?”

Joey nodded, sitting down on the hill—which Travis figured was in fact a mountain, since they were in the mountains and all—and wrapping his tail around himself. “Are you okay?”

“I’m just tired.” Travis sat beside him, sliding his pack off. He felt like he was having to breathe harder the higher up they went. The hill sort of curved around the side of this mountain, and from here they had a really nice view of a lot of other mountains. 

At least there was no snow. Dragons didn’t normally live that high up, according to Joey. 

Joey nodded, tail moving so it was wrapped around Travis instead. Travis put his arm around Joey, and Joey rested his head on Travis’s shoulder. “You’re all sweaty.”

“Yeah.” Travis was, and he wondered if there would be a pond somewhere he could wash off in. “It’s not hot. But the climbing.”

Joey nodded, his horn rubbing against Travis’s cheek. He wasn’t as sweaty, but Travis didn’t know if dragons actually did sweat or not. “We’re almost done.”

“I know.” Travis reached up, stroked Joey’s horn out of curiosity. It wasn’t as coarse as it seemed like it should be.

“Mm.” Joey shifted, a content noise escaping him.

“You like that?” Travis hadn’t expected that Joey would even be able to feel it. He’d always figured horns were like fingernails or something. 

“Yeah, it feels nice.” Joey nestled closer to Travis. 

“Hm.” Travis kept doing it, watching Joey. Soon it became kind of obvious that it felt nice in a way Travis hadn’t expected. “Must feel really nice,” he teased.

Joey looked down at his boner, giggled. “Yeah.” He crawled into Travis’s lap, facing him. “Keep going.”

Travis nodded, using both hands now as Joey rubbed against him. Travis grew hard, his dick ending up between Joey’s legs, between his buttcheeks, rubbing up and down with Joey’s movements. 

That was giving him kind of an idea of where he could put that, an idea that he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to try out on this hill but that they probably would anyway, when a shadow passed over them.

Joey stopped, looking up, and Travis looked with him, to see a black and green dragon flying overhead, banking around to come back to them. “It’s Louis,” Joey said, watching him. “I think he’s going to try and land.”

“Not…like, on us, right?” Travis asked, wondering if they should move. 

“Probably not.”  
That was not the most reassuring ‘probably’ Travis had ever heard, and he kept a careful eye on Louis as he came down, for all the world like he intended to fly right into the side of the mountain, only to shift into his smaller form right as Travis prepared to cover Joey’s head. He landed as if from a small jump, grinning at them, and then made a face as he started to fall backwards.

“Woah,” Travis said, and he and Joey reached out and grabbed one of Louis’s arms each, pulling him forward so he wouldn’t end up rolling down the hill. They overbalanced, pulled him too far and he fell forward instead, landing sort of in between but mostly on top of them in a big dragon pile. 

“Thanks,” Louis said, extricating himself from them both by mostly just crawling up their bodies, his dick brushing Travis’s cheek on the way by. He sat just above them and sighed. “You guys go missing from your cave and I find you fucking on this intense hill. What the hell?”

“We weren’t…” Travis protested, as he and Joey also returned to sitting positions.

“We’re going to see my sire,” Joey told him, looking at Louis worriedly. “I want to warn him about the knights.”

Louis nodded slowly, stretching his wings. “Yeah. Okay. That’s not a bad idea, actually. You’re not worried he’ll attack you?”

Joey shook his head. “He wouldn’t. And…I’m not trying to move back into his cave or take anything. I’m just worried about him.”

“I guess.” Louis let out a sigh. “I’ll come with you, just in case. It’s not far from here.”

“You don’t have to…”

“I’m worried about you, runt,” he said to Joey, patting Travis on the shoulder. “This guy’s not going to be enough to protect you if your sire gets territorial.” 

“Hey,” Travis said, though it was true.

Joey smiled at him, taking Travis’s hand. “We should get going.”

“Yeah.” Travis was still hard—it was remarkable how fast his aversion to people being there during stuff like this had faded—but he slid his pack back on and stood with Joey. 

“You two don’t want to continue what you were doing?” Louis asked, standing with them. “I can wait.”

“Maybe when we get to the top of the hill,” Joey told him, also still hard. “I don’t want to roll all the way down again.”

“Yeah, that’d be annoying for you non-flying types,” Louis agreed, turning around. “All right, let’s go.”

“Yeah. Are you okay?” Joey asked Travis.

Travis nodded, squeezing his hand. “Of course. It’s not much farther. Let’s go.”

It was just a hill. And Travis could conquer worse than this as long as Joey kept holding his hand.


	10. Dragons and Humans Deal with Life Stages Differently, but There Are Many Similarities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers of other parts of my series will have seen this coming. New readers perhaps not so much.

The entrance to the cave where Joey’s sire lived was huge, and also most of the way up a mountain. It was pretty hard to miss, but it had also taken them a while to get to. Travis guessed that it was easier for people who could fly. 

Either way, they were here now, standing outside and looking at the hole. “Is he in there?” Travis asked.

“Probably,” Joey said. “And if he’s not, he won’t be away for long. He won’t want to leave the princess.”

“Right.” Travis nodded, starting to slip his pack off his back.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to get dressed,” Travis told him. “So the princess doesn’t freak out.”

Joey and Louis both looked at him for a long moment. “That’s stupid,” Joey told him. “We’re not putting fur on.”

“I know, but…” Travis gestured vaguely at himself. “I’m not a dragon. She might be annoyed.”

Louis snorted. “She’s going to see dicks no matter what. There’s not much difference between two dicks and three. Get over it.”

“There’s an entire dick’s worth of difference there!” Travis insisted.

“Yeah, but yours is tiny, she probably won’t even see it,” Louis said, patting Travis on the back. 

Travis glared at him. Joey took Travis’s wrist and just pulled him forward. “Come on. We’ll just tell her I burned all your clothes or something.” 

Sighing, Travis hefted the pack back onto his back and just went along. “Okay, but if I get stuff thrown at me it’s your fault.”

Joey nodded, not really listening as they approached the mouth of the cave, where he stopped, shifting his weight nervously. “You okay?” Travis asked him.

“Yeah. Just…he kicked me out, is all. So…”

“Yeah.” Travis smiled reassuringly at him. “It’ll be fine. Like you said, you’re not trying to move back in. You’re just coming to say hi.”

“Yeah,” Joey repeated, nodding. He exhaled a long breath. “Okay.”

He took a step into the cave, hand still on Travis’s wrist. 

Inside, they were met with a stink, much stronger than Travis had found in other caves. “Ugh,” he said, cover his mouth with his other hand. “Gross.” His voice echoed through the silent cave.

“Yeah,” Joey agreed, looking around with his nose wrinkled. “It’s…there.” He pointed at a large form, sleeping. His sire, lit a little by the sun filtering more and more into the cave as the sun finished rising. Bright red scales shone, and Travis couldn’t quite get a grip on the size. He was bigger than Louis when he was transformed. 

“Oh, wow,” said Travis, intelligently. “He’s big.”

Joey took a breath of the fetid air, looking around. “I don’t see a princess.”

“He’s not going to roast us if we wake him up, right?” Travis asked. He was very big. 

“Just in case, you go poke him,” Louis suggested. Travis threw him the finger, which he could safely do because dragons didn’t know what that meant.

Together, they started to move around Joey’s sire, and slowly his hoard came into view as well, piles of gold and other shiny things. No princess. Travis was increasingly getting the sense that something was wrong, and he couldn’t figure out why. 

“Something’s wrong,” Joey muttered, confirming Travis’s suspicions. “The hoard. It’s smaller. I think it’s been looted.”

All at once Travis realized it. There was no sound in the cave. None at all. No sound of Joey’s sire breathing in his sleep. He wasn’t breathing. “Joey…”

“Guys,” Louis said, having wandered over to Joey’s sire a little. He was standing there, perfectly still, looking at his head. Travis and Joey joined him. 

Joey’s sire was laying there on his belly, head facing them, eyes open. And even from here they could see the slash in his neck, the pile of dried blood they were standing in. “Oh, no,” Joey said, rushing forward, putting his hand on his sire’s head, looking him over. “No, no, no…”

“Oh, God,” Travis whispered, looking up at the body. How could something that big…die? Of course he knew dragons must die, but seeing it, seeing it like this, was…it seemed impossible. There were millions of stories about people killing dragons, but how was it possible to kill something this big?

Hands on his sire’s neck, Joey bowed his head, sniffling. Travis came over, pulled him into a hug. “He’s dead,” Joey cried, burying his face in Travis’s chest. “They killed him. Why did they kill him?” 

“I don’t know,” Travis said quietly, holding Joey. “I don’t know.”

“It was definitely a human who did this,” Louis said, approaching more slowly. “Not another dragon. But…he’s been dead for a while. The blood is long dry, the scales are starting to flake. Those knights you guys saw. They didn’t have the princess with them?”

“No,” Travis said, shaking his head. “It was all guys in armour with swords. Well, their leader was a lady. But she was a knight too, not the princess.” 

“Someone else must have killed him,” Louis said, frowning. He rested a hand on Joey’s sire, contemplative. 

“I don’t care,” Joey growled, still letting Travis hold him. “I’m going to kill whoever it was. I’m going to find them and then I’m going to kill them.”

“How? You can’t fight. You can’t even transform.”

Joey let go of Travis to turn and glare at Louis. “I’ll learn.”

“Yeah. You’re going to have to, runt.” Louis looked away from Joey’s sire, down to him now. “You have to learn. Because he’s not going to protect you anymore. The others left you alone because they were afraid of him. But once they realize he’s dead…Joey, I can’t protect you from them.” He sounded pained. 

“I know.” Joey had tears on his face, but his expression was hard. He looked up at Travis, taking in a breath. “We have to leave.”

“What?” Travis asked, looking from him to Louis.

“Louis is right,” Joey told him, shaking his head. He looked determined. “The other dragons aren’t going to have any reason not to kill me. And they’ll kill you too.” His voice caught at that. “We have to go somewhere safer. At least for now. At least until I can transform to defend us both.”

Travis felt tears come to his eyes now. “They wouldn’t really…”

“They would,” Joey interrupted, nodding. “They would, Travis. We have to go.”

“This is your home, though.” And it had become Travis’s too.

“I know.” Joey put on a smile now. “We’ll come back, once it’s safer. But we can’t stay here now.”

Travis lowered his head, taking in a breath. He didn’t want to leave. He’d never thought he would want to spend his life living in a cave, but he did. 

Living in a cave with a dragon, though. He didn’t want to stay here if Joey wasn’t going to be here. He didn’t want to stay anywhere where Joey wasn’t. If Joey was leaving, so was he. He looked up, nodded. “Okay,” he said, hands on Joey’s shoulders. “Let’s go.”

Joey nodded, looking at his sire again. 

“Are you going to come?” Travis asked Louis, who smiled thinly at him. 

“No.”

Joey shook his head. “He’s going to stay here. My sire’s cave is empty, his hoard is there. It’s too good an opportunity.” 

“He’s going to…take it?” That seemed wrong to Travis. It seemed like it should rightfully belong to Joey. 

“Yeah. That’s how it works.” Travis couldn’t identify the emotion in Joey’s voice. 

Louis nodded, and he held up a hand. “Hold on. Give me that for a second.” He pointed to Travis’s pack.

“Uh, sure.” Travis did as he was told, Trusting Louis to give it back.

Louis took it, wandered over to the hoard, and opened the pack. He scooped up a few handfuls of gold coins, and dropped them in Travis’s bag, loose. Then he shut it and returned the bag. “You’re going to need that, probably. It’s how humans feed themselves, right?” 

“Yeah,” Travis said, feeling oddly light. That was…a lot of gold that Louis had just casually scooped into his bag. It was more than enough to sustain him and Joey pretty much forever if they were careful. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Joey echoed, and he reached forward and hugged Louis tight. “You didn’t need to do that.”

Louis hugged him back, eyes closed. “If I was stronger, I could protect you,” he whispered.

Joey shook his head. “It’s okay. I have to protect myself now.”

“Not totally,” Travis promised, slipping the bag back on. “I’m going to protect you too.”

Joey let go of Louis, and he took Travis’s hand. “Don’t be silly. You’re part of my hoard. If I can’t protect you, what kind of dragon am I?”

Travis squeezed Joey’s hand, laughing a little. “Did it ever occur to you that you’re part of mine, too?”

Joey blinked, and went a little red in the face. “I love you too,” he muttered.

Joey cast one last look at his sire’s body, and then at Louis, who was hugging himself now, looking around the cave nervously. “You’ll be okay.”

“So will you,” Louis promised. “I’ll see you.”

“I’ll fly in,” Joey said, nodding. He put his hand on his sire’s jaw. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and then he moved away, pulling Travis with him. 

It was fast, it was all moving too fast. Travis couldn’t imagine moving from learning a parent had died to leaving a home that quickly. But that was how they worked, that was how dragons worked. They didn’t feel the same way he did. 

So he waved goodbye to Louis. “You’ll do great!” he called, as Joey pulled him out of the cave. Louis smiled, waving at the two of them as they went. 

And Joey pulled Travis away, out of the cave, down the path, all dragon, hard.

For a few minutes anyway, until he stopped, stopped walking, and just stood there, eyes squeezed shut, tears falling again. “I…”

“I know,” Travis said, putting an arm around him. 

“We don’t feel the way you do,” Joey whispered. “This is just how it is. But…it’s harder, than I thought.”

“Yeah.” Travis hugged Joey again, and Joey hugged him back, his tail wrapping around Travis’s waist. He’d never known his parents. He didn’t know what it was like to lose them. “I don’t think it’s that different, Joey,” he said, kissing Joey between his horns. “I don’t think being a dragon means you can’t grieve for him.”

Joey nodded, breath stuttering. “I loved him. Not like I love you. Not the same. But I did.”

“Yeah.” Travis knew. He could feel the future opening up in front of them, and had no idea what was going to happen. But that was okay. “I love you, Joey. More than anything. And I’m going to stay with you forever.”

It was okay, because he had Joey. 

“I love you too, Travis,” Joey promised, holding him tight. “And I’m not ever letting you go.”

It was okay, because they were together. 

“We should go,” Travis whispered.

“Yeah.” Joey nodded, pulling back from Travis, taking his hand as they started down the path to anywhere. 

It was okay, because the world was big and full of things neither of them had ever seen, and neither of them knew where they were going, but they both knew what mattered. 

It was okay, because no matter what happened, they would always have each other. 

It was okay.


	11. Taking a Dragon into the World Requires Compromise and Patience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so. This is pretty much an epilogue to the main part of this story, which ended in the last chapter. The next two chapters after this one are going to feature a big jump in time by about a year, and show the events leading up to Travis and Joey joining up with the characters from [one of my other stories](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4716863/chapters/10774919), where they show up in chapter 28. So don't be alarmed in the next chapter when suddenly a bunch of time has passed. :)

“These are too small for you, dear,” the shopkeeper said, as Travis went to pay her.

Travis smiled at her. “I know. They’re for my friend.” 

He and Joey had gotten out of the mountains and were heading east, but they’d come to this big town with a wooden wall and Travis had made them stop. Joey had thought he was being stupid, but Travis had put his foot down. 

If they were going to start going where there were towns, Joey needed clothes, whether he wanted them or not. 

“It would be easier if your friend were here,” the nice lady told him, as Travis dug through his bag for some money. “To make sure they fit him properly.”

Travis nodded absently, pulling out one of the gold coins Louis had given him. He put it down on the counter with a smile. “He’s shy,” he said, as the lady looked at the coin, eyes wide. People didn’t often pay in gold around here. 

“This is too much, young man. Let me…”

“It’s okay,” Travis told her, glancing off to the side. “Can I take that too?” 

“Of course,” the lady said, without hesitation. 

Travis smiled, scooped up the clothes he’d bought, and went to take the big cloak that was hanging on a hook by the door. “Thank you,” he said, waving awkwardly at the lady. “Have a good day.”

“You too, young man. Come back sometime!”

Travis probably wouldn’t, but he smiled and ducked out of the store, orienting himself on the street for a second before heading west to the town’s gate. Joey was waiting outside. He couldn’t exactly wander around the town naked and wrapped in a blanket to hide his horns. It would raise some questions, and he was rightfully worried that people would find out he was a dragon. 

If he wore the cloak, though, Joey would be able to come into towns with him. They could stay in inns and everything. Nobody would question a person keeping a hood up, probably. Maybe. Hopefully. Travis worried, but they could always leave a town if they had to. 

Maybe he should buy a better knife, too. 

But first things first, he had to dress his dragon. He’d bought clothes a little bigger than Joey’s size because he’d wanted to avoid making Joey feel too constricted in them, and tried to avoid any fabrics that looked like they would scratch. Hopefully Joey liked them. Hopefully he’d wear them. 

Travis had left Joey in some trees about half a kilometer outside the walls of the town, and he headed down the road, looking around as he did. This was farmland, mostly, so it wasn’t impossible that someone might be around. But he didn’t see anyone, so he ducked off the road and into the trees. “Joey?” he called, looking around. It was dim from the canopy, but not dark. “I’m back.” 

There was no answer. Travis looked around, slipping his pack off and holding the clothes all in one hand. “Joey?”

Still no answer. Now Travis was worried. Had he gone off somewhere? Maybe he’d decided to explore and found one of the farms nearby. Maybe someone had found him and was mounting Joey’s head on their wall as Travis…

A sudden growl, and then a heavy weight on his back as Joey leapt at him from a tree, knocking Travis hard to the ground, taking his breath away. “I win,” Joey giggled from his back.

Travis took a second to get his breath back, as Joey leaned in and sniffed his neck. He was just sitting there on Travis, his weight all that was holding Travis in place. Travis smiled. “Oh yeah?” And he lifted himself up, rolling over, tussling a bit but managing to get Joey underneath him. “Looks like I win.”

Joey struggled, growing hard. “No fair.” 

“Sure it is,” Travis said, and he leaned down and kissed Joey, to keep him distracted until he stopped struggling. Now both of them were hard, though, and Joey was reaching down and pushing Travis’s pants down instead of trying to get away. 

Travis kept kissing him as his boner sprang free, reaching over to the pack that had fallen beside him and sticking his hand inside, groping around for one of the many bottles of oil he’d bought in the town. It was as necessary a commodity as the food or the clothes he’d bought. Finding one, Travis retrieved it and thumbed the cork out, lifting up from Joey for a moment, grinning down at him as he slipped the bottle in between them and poured the oil on his dick. 

When he was done, he set the bottle carefully aside and kissed Joey, who was flushed and impatient looking now. Travis kissed him again, this time using one hand to guide himself, and he quickly slid his dick inside Joey’s hole, burying it there. In the few weeks since they’d started doing this, Joey always insisted that Travis not waste time stretching him and well, they’d just done it a few hours ago anyway. So Travis wasn’t worried about hurting Joey. 

He pressed into Joey’s tightness, holding Joey. Joey made a noise between a growl and a cry, kissing Travis hard. His fang cut Travis’s lip and both of them tasted blood, but neither of them stopped kissing.

Travis fucked Joey roughly, the way he’d learned Joey liked it. It had only been a few weeks, but they’d gotten a lot of practice at this since they’d started. Joey wrapped both his legs and his tail around Travis’s waist, and his arms around Travis’s neck, growl-moaning all the time, his dick leaking onto Travis’s shirt. 

Travis felt himself building and he went harder, biting Joey’s lip as he thrust. Joey clenched suddenly, grip on Travis tightening, and he cried out into Travis’s mouth and came, arching his back as he did. The clench around his dick was enough to make Travis cum too, and he drove deep inside Joey, filling his dragon with cum. 

They lay there together for a minute, Travis still inside Joey, still kissing, but more gently. “I love you,” Travis told Joey.

“I love you too,” Joey muttered back. 

“And I brought you clothes.”

“I don’t want them.”

“Too bad. I won.”

“Your reward for winning was that you got to fuck me.”

Travis shook his head. “No, that was just for fun. Come on.” He sat them up, pulling out of Joey with a wince from both of them, and reached over for some of the clothes that had been scattered around. “I found soft fabrics that won’t bother your skin, and it’s all big enough that it won’t be too tight. And I bought you a proper cloak so you won’t have to wear that blanket anymore.” He picked up a pair of smallclothes and handed them Joey. 

Joey made a face, looking at them. Then he sighed, leaned back, and pulled them on. And immediately pulled them back off. “Nope. No. Too tight.” 

“Joey…”

“Nope.” Joey shook his head. And he used the smallclothes to clean his chest off, and then to wipe the cum from between his legs. “That’s what I’ll use these for. That’s all. The point of clothes is to hide my dick from everyone, and these will do that just fine,” he said, touching Travis’s pants. 

Travis sighed. He could compromise on that. “Fine, but I don’t want to hear you complain about chafing.”

“You’re going to hear me complain a _lot_ ,” Joey explained, picking up a pair of pants and pulling those on. He made a face. “I don’t like them. But I guess it’s okay if it means humans won’t try to stab me.”

As much as Travis hated to see Joey’s dick disappear under the fabric—not that well, the bulge was obvious with no smallclothes—he nodded. The pants were nice and baggy on Joey, and he held out a belt, showing Joey how to loop it in.

“Um…” Joey stood up, the pants sliding down. They were underneath his tail in the back, and not high enough up to stay on. “I think they didn’t think about people with tails when they invented these.” 

“I guess not,” Travis said, thinking. “Here.” He unbuckled the belt, re-looped it so that instead of going through the back of the pants, they went over Joey’s tail with the pants beneath. That kept them up. Awkwardly, but up. “Nobody but me is going to see that anyway,” he decided.

He picked up a shirt and helped Joey into it, careful not to tear the collar on his horns. Travis tied up the laces in the front, then stood back to admire Joey. “There. You look really cute.”

He did, standing there fidgeting and picking at his clothes everywhere they were touching his skin. “I’m not going to be able to wear this when I get wings,” he said. 

“I know. But when you get wings you’ll be able to change shape and we can go back to the mountains anyway,” Travis told him, doing up his own pants, and then grabbing the cloak and putting it around Joey’s shoulders, pinning it for him. It was stupidly huge on him, and made him look tiny and adorable. Well, he already looked adorable, but anyway. Travis pulled the hood up over Joey’s horns, smiling as it hid them entirely. It even made him look taller. “There.”

“I hate it.”

“I know.” Travis touched Joey’s cheek. “Sorry. But you have to.”

“I know.” Joey sighed. “I will. For you. But as soon as we’re alone I’m taking it all off.”

“That’s fine.”

“And you have to suck my dick every night in exchange.”

“Deal.”

Joey cast his glance around, as if trying to find another demand. “And we have to have sex whenever I say.”

“I can live with that.” Travis grinned. “But no taking them off in front of people.” 

“Okay.” Joey sighed. Then, suddenly, he brightened. “Oh! Look what I found earlier! I’m going to add it to my hoard.”

Joey turned around and tripped over the cloak. Travis dutifully didn’t laugh as, grumbling, he got up, and carefully headed over to some nearby bushes, rifling through them. He came up with a wind chime, which he happily showed to Travis. “It makes a sparkly noise!”

Travis looked at it, touching lightly because he knew Joey would let him. “Where…did you get this?”

“I went exploring while you were gone. There’s a house over there that had nobody at it and this was just on the side.” Joey was grinning proudly. “Isn’t it pretty?”

“Yeah, it is…” Travis sighed. “Joey, you’ve got to stop stealing stuff.” He’d managed to lift something almost every time they stopped near a settlement, which was impressive because they hadn’t gone into any since Joey hadn’t had any clothes until now. Travis feared for what would happen now that Joey could actually pass through the gates of a town. 

“Nope.” Joey grinned, going and putting the chime in Travis’s bag along with the rest of his growing hoard. “Not my fault if they left it unguarded. I’ll take better care of it than they did.”

Travis sighed again. They could argue about this or they could argue about Joey wearing clothes, and one was a bit more pressing. So he just smiled, patting Joey on the back. “Soon I won’t be able to carry your whole hoard around.”

“Then I’d better learn how to transform so I can,” Joey said, still beaming. He touched the spot on Travis’s lip where he’d cut him earlier. “Anyway, now that I have clothes, we can go in the town, right? I want to see a bed like you told me about.”

Travis laughed, gathering up the rest of the stuff he’d bought and shoving it into the pack, corking the oil before he did. “Yeah. There’s all kinds of stuff I can show you now.”

“Good.” Joey took Travis’s arm, a little awkward with the cloak, but he made it work. “Let’s go, then. I want to see everything.”

Travis let Joey pull him over to the road, smiling all the way. He could already tell they were in for quite the adventure.


	12. Even Dragons Need Help when Things Get Hard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big skip forward in time! As fun as it would be to write all their adventures--and I may do that someday--I want to end the story by showing the events directly before they met Cal and company in the other story.

“We cannot help you, small one.” 

“But…” Joey made an exasperated noise. “I’m not asking for much. I just want to know how to transform!”

Travis just hung back and watched Joey argue with the tall dragon lady. She was apparently the matriarch of all the dragons in this area, and the fact that she’d taken the time to talk to Joey was a big deal. She was the fifth shapeshifting dragon they’d met since coming here to the southern cliffs, and like all of them, she was really, really pretty, and really, really naked. 

Travis had seen a few naked ladies before, but he had to admit that Mathilda the dragon matriarch took the cake, even if she was three hundred years old. She was very pretty, just like all dragons were, and Travis had realized upon meeting more dragons that his sexual attraction mostly seemed to skew towards dragons. 

Which was fine, because it skewed almost entirely towards Joey.

“Your transformation isn’t something taught,” Mathilda told Joey. “It’s something innate. You will discover the power on your own someday.”

“But I should have discovered it already,” Joey pressed. 

After traveling around for most of a year, Travis and Joey had ended up down in the south, where Joey had heard there was a big clan of dragons, and decided to ask them for help. He was no closer to figuring out his transformation powers than he had been when they’d met, and Travis knew that was frustrating to him. He didn’t even have wings like all the other dragons they’d met here. 

Travis privately liked that he didn’t have wings, it made him easier to hug from behind. But anyway. 

“You should have,” Mathilda agreed, with an imperious nod. She was an imperious lady. Dragon. Travis wondered if being the matriarch kind of made her like the queen. “Perhaps you are defective.”

“Hey!” Travis said, getting annoyed immediately. He took a step forward, as if he wasn’t facing down a little dragon in nothing but his skin. Since they were in dragon territory, they’d both taken the opportunity to shed their clothes. Joey had never grown accustomed to wearing them anyway, and Travis found himself more comfortable without them too. Those few weeks in the mountains with Joey had really changed his perspective on a lot of things. 

“Travis,” Joey said, holding up a warning hand.

“No, she can’t just call you names. You’re just asking for help.”

Joey was upset too, Travis could see it, in how red and splotchy he was—moreso than he’d been, Travis thought he was coming down with something the last day or two—but he wasn’t saying anything. So it was up to Travis to say it for both of them. 

Mathilda laughed at him. “Unless you plan to offer yourself to me as a gift on his behalf, human, I suggest you remain quiet.”

Travis didn’t mean to flood with colour. He just…couldn’t help picturing being a gift to her. He shook his head vehemently. “Nope. I’m Joey’s. Don’t even think about it, lady.”

“Funny, I think if I were to take you, the little one wouldn’t be able to do much about it, now would he?” Mathilda asked, with a smile in Joey’s direction. 

Face reddening, Joey just growled at her. His tail swished back and forth in the dirt. “I’ll fight you.”

“You’ll die.”

“You won’t take him away from me.”

Another laugh. “Don’t fear, little one. I can obtain my own easily enough if I so desire. I will not take yours.” 

She’d introduced herself as Mathilda, which clearly wasn’t a dragon name. That told Travis that she’d met humans before who’d given her a name to use. So she probably wasn’t joking. 

“In any case,” Mathilda continued, with a regal wave of her hand, “even if transformation were something we could teach you, we would not. Your growth and development are not our concern.”

“But…”

“Either you will learn to transform properly, or you will remain weak,” Mathilda said, obviously uncaring. “Either way, you will do so elsewhere.” 

“I came all the way here!”

She looked him over, then looked at Travis in such a way that he was worried about certain parts of his anatomy migrating permanently upwards from fear. “I don’t care. It seems to me that you’ve spent too much time around humans, and have forgotten that we don’t do things like they do.” 

“Well…” Joey looked away, and so did Travis. They had spend all of the last nine months around humans as they’d travelled. Travis had been proud of how good Joey had gotten at interacting with them, albeit from under the hood of the cloak Travis had bought him. He’d also mostly stopped stealing from people, which was good. 

Joey let out a sigh. “Fine. I don’t need your help anyway.”

“You shouldn’t,” Mathilda agreed, turning around, tail swinging. “Out of respect for the fact that your rut is about to begin, I will permit you to remain in our territory until its cessation. After that, you will leave immediately.”

“My…my rut?” Joey asked, which was good, because Travis also had no idea what she was talking about.

Well, he did. He’d seen deer and whatever. But Joey wasn’t a deer.

Mathilda looked over her shoulder at him. “You don’t know anything about yourself, do you?”

“I…” Joey flushed again. “I know what a rut is! I just…thought I wasn’t going to…because I can’t transform, so I…”

Mathilda laughed. “Oh, dear. So it’s your first one? I do hope your friend is…prepared.”

Joey looked at Travis, a little lost. Travis tried to give him a reassuring smile. From what he knew about animals, all it meant was that Joey was going to want to mate for the next little while. And well, they happened to have gotten pretty good at that over the months. He wasn’t worried.

“You are quite out of season,” Mathilda said, glancing at the sun. “But alas. Perhaps just part of your unusual physical state. There are a number of empty caves you may use.”

And with that, she transformed, dark blue scales somehow shining in the sun, and she leapt into the air, the wind pushed down by her wings knocking Travis onto his backside. 

They watched her fly away, and only when she was a good distance off did Travis get up and dust himself off. “Well, she sucked,” he declared, going over and taking Joey’s hand. “Sorry,” he said. “I know you were hoping…”

“It’s fine,” Joey said, tail wrapping around Travis’s leg. “I should have known better than to think…she was right, I’ve spent too much time around humans. Gotten used to them being kind to each other. I forgot that’s not how we do things.”

Travis nodded. He’d forgotten too. “You’ll figure it out on your own, then. That’ll teach her.”

“Yeah,” Joey said, biting his lip. He was still all red in the face. “Um. I think she was right. About my rut.”

“Yeah?” Travis put his free hand on Joey’s forehead, which was very warm. “You’re awfully hot. I was worried you were getting sick.”

He didn’t think dragons got sick, but he’d been worried anyway. Travis worried about Joey a lot. 

“Yeah. Um. I’ve never done this before, but I know how it works. I’m going to be, well. Really horny, for a bit.”

“So we’ll have to have lots of sex?” Travis asked, grinning. “Darn, that’s going to suck.”

Joey laughed. “Yeah. I’m, um, going to want to be on top.”

“Sure,” Travis said, with a shrug. He usually topped Joey, just because he was smaller so it was easier for him to do the penetrating. But it wasn’t like he’d never had Joey inside him before. “Let’s go find one of those caves.”

Joey nodded, tugging Travis in the direction of the caves. He was already getting hard, but so was Travis. “Listen. When I’ve seen dragons in ruts before, we don’t…listen much to reason, or, well. Anything. The ones I’ve seen just get aggressive and…”

Travis kissed Joey’s cheek. “I don’t mind you being rough.”

“What I’m saying is that I’m worried if I get too rough and you say no, I might not listen to you.” Joey sounded really worried. 

“Oh,” Travis said, getting the problem now. “Hey. I’m not worried. You’d never hurt me.”

“No, but…”

“The only reason you’d have to be aggressive with me would be if we were competing for girls, which we’re not doing, or if I was challenging you, which I won’t do, right?”

“I guess…”

“Then it’s fine.”

“But…I’m just saying it might be safer if you go and leave me alone for a few days.”

“Joey,” Travis said, tugging his hand. “Stop worrying. I love you. I’m not going to abandon you because of something you can’t help. And if you end up hurting me, then…” he shrugged. “It won’t be on purpose, and we’ll know that for next time, okay?”

Travis knew that he should be taking this seriously, and he was, but he just really, really didn’t think Joey was going to hurt him. Not in a serious way. Joey hurt him all the time in a playful way, bruises and scratches and bites and whatever, but nothing that was meant to be hurtful. Travis would be able to tell the difference.

He assumed. 

“Okay.” Joey squeezed his hand, nodding. He still looked worried. “If I do hurt you, I want to know, okay? I don’t want you to pretend I didn’t.”

“Promise,” Travis said, and Joey nodded again. 

They found a small cave without incident. It was smaller than Joey’s old cave in the mountains, but it was big enough for them to live in for a few days, especially since they’d mostly be doing one thing, Travis assumed. “How long is your rut going to last?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Joey told him, as Travis set his pack down in the corner. “I’m out of season, like Mathilda said.” His eyes were changing colour, Travis saw, just a bit. “A few days, a week? Maybe longer. Hopefully not.” He was shifting uncomfortably. That had happened fast. Travis was glad that Mathilda had pointed it out, otherwise Joey might have just tackled him on the road or something. “Can we?”

“Yeah.” Travis took out the bottle of oil from the bag and tossed it to Joey, to poured it on his dick before handing it back. Travis coated his fingers and lay down, sliding two in and starting to finger himself quickly. He let himself get used to it before adding a third finger, ignoring the sting. He didn’t mind when it hurt a bit. Joey was watching him impatiently, shifting from foot to foot. 

His fingers weren’t nearly long enough to prepare him for Joey anyway, so Travis let himself get comfortable, and then pulled them out, pulling his legs apart. “Ready.”

Joey nodded, and he got down on his knees and crawled forward, positioning his dick with one hand and putting the other on Travis’s hip. 

And with a growl, he pushed in all at once, surprising Travis and sending a spike of pain through him. “Ah…”

“Sorry,” Joey said, voice low. He put his hands on Travis’s shoulders.

“It’s okay,” Travis said, trying to get used to it. Joey was already moving, which made it harder. Joey thrusted awkwardly at first, but he picked up familiarity as he went, and picked up speed as that happened, until he was going pretty hard. His head was thrown back, eyes shut as he fucked Travis, lost in his head.

Travis tried to put his hands on Joey’s sides and got a growl in response, so he let them fall, trying to move his hips in tune with Joey’s thrusts, the light friction of Joey’s belly against his dick just enough to frustrate without actually getting him off.

Joey came with a wordless sound, filling Travis with dragon cum. He shot a lot, five, six, seven, eight spurts. More than usual, buried to the hilt inside Travis. 

He wasn’t done. As Travis relaxed at the end, Joey started moving again, still hard as a rock as he resumed his previous speed. At least the pain had faded.

Joey didn’t throw back his head this time, but lowered it, sniffing Travis’s neck deeply before moving down to bite his collarbone, which made Travis cry out a little. Joey growled in response, picking up speed with his hips. 

Travis liked being bit, and Joey kept doing it, over and over, all down his collarbone, for Travis didn’t know how long. His body was radiating heat. 

He did know that he came from it, from that and the fucking and the friction on Joey’s belly, and he arched his back and moaned Joey’s name as he coated them both in his seed. Joey growled, pushed deep inside him, deeper than before, and released another flood of cum inside Travis, holding still until it was done. 

Sweaty, flushed, eyes reptilian, Joey looked down at Travis, panting. “Sorry,” He growled. “I’m not going to stop…”

“That’s okay,” Travis told him, nodding weakly. He could keep going, he was fine. “Keep going.”

Joey nodded, pulling out. “Turn over.”

Travis did as he was told, getting on his hands and knees, and as soon as he was in position Joey rammed back into him and started going again, the new position affording him much more speed and strength.

And he used it, ramming into Travis as he tried to satisfy some primal urge, and Travis didn’t have any way to measure but he swore there was more dick than there had been. 

Maybe his rut would be the key to Joey’s transformation powers. Travis would make that joke—if it was a joke—when this was all over.

But since it showed no sign of being over for a while, Travis just braced himself and let Joey pound him, prepared to do whatever was needed to help his dragon get through this. 

Besides, he reasoned, how many more times could Joey really go?


	13. Not All Dragons Kidnap Princes, Some Just Want to Make Friends and Protect What’s Important to Them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said a while ago, chapter 10 was really the end of the formal narrative for Travis and Joey. These last three chapters were mostly to show some of how they got to where they were when we met them as supporting characters in Team, which is where we catch them up to here, and where their story ends--not because their adventure ended, but because they aren't by themselves anymore they've got a whole host of other characters to hang with! Not to worry, this won't be that last we see of these two!
> 
> Thanks to everyone who read this story, I was glad to have entertained you with Joey and Travis, and I hope they'll continue to do so in the other stories!

A week later, and Travis could still barely sit down without being sore. He was pretty sure that even after a few baths he still smelled like Joey. He’d lost count of how many times Joey had gone after the first night.

After three days of it, Travis was glad that dragons only rutted once a year.

Still, he was happy to have helped Joey out, and he’d do it again if he had to. Maybe with a bit of warning next time, but still. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Joey asked him, kicking his feet a little under the table. They were out of dragon territory and had been for a few days, and they’d made preparations in this little town to start travelling west. Since the dragons here hadn’t been willing to help Joey, he wanted to find dragons somewhere else who might. So they’d talked about it and decided to try getting passage on a ship heading across the ocean. There were probably dragons in Aergyre, and even if there weren’t, it would be a fun adventure.

They’d had a lot of fun adventures since leaving the mountains last year. 

“Yeah,” Travis said, smiling at Joey. He wouldn’t change a thing about his life. Not a thing. “I’m fine.”

“Just, we can wait a few more days to travel if it still hurts.” Travis knew that Joey felt bad about how rough he’d been for those three days, but it was fine. 

“I’m okay,” Travis insisted. “A little sore, but I can walk it off. You’re not _that_ big.”

Under his heavy cloak, Joey grinned. “Yes I am.”

“Anyway,” Travis said, rolling his eyes as he kicked Joey under the table, who was indeed that big, “I’m fine to travel. What about you?”

“I’m not the one who spent three days on my stomach,” Joey reminded him.

“No, but you’re the one who got bitched out by that stupid dragon lady,” Travis reminded him back. “How are you feeling?”

“Um…” Joey shrugged. “It’s fine. I’m not surprised that she didn’t help or anything. I just…I don’t know. Thought I might be able to convince her. But it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay that she was so mean to you.”

“What are we going to do, go fight her?” Joey laughed a little to himself. “I like not being dead.”

Fair enough, Travis thought, nodding. Still, he was annoyed. 

“Don’t worry about me,” Joey said, reaching out and taking Travis’s hand. 

“I worry about you all the time,” Travis said, because he did. “I know it’s hard for you, being stuck like that.”

Joey shook his head. “I like this body. I really do. Even if I could transform I’d use it most of the time, probably.”

“Because of me?” Travis asked.

“Yeah. I think certain things we like to do would get a bit hard if I were bigger than this building,” Joey joked.

“Maybe about the size of this building.” Travis couldn’t help but poke, just a little.

“You’re not allowed to call me short,” Joey chided, expression darkening for a second. 

Travis grinned at him. “I’m allowed to call you whatever I want.”

Joey looked away, eyes scanning the common room of the inn. “I guess,” he grumbled. 

“You three have a lot of experience with dragons, right?”

Travis turned to look at the table down the room from theirs, where four guys were sitting and eating. A big, muscular northerner, an almost as big southerner. A guy about Joey’s size who looked to be about in between. A pale and kind of freckly guy, eyeing the other three. He was the one who’d spoken. 

“They’re talking about going to find dragons,” Joey said, watching them.

“Yeah.” Or at least that was what it sounded like. 

“I thought I overheard them mention it a minute ago too,” Joey muttered. His posture was set in such a way that Travis sighed. “I’m going to go talk to them.”

“You shouldn’t,” Travis warned. They’d managed not to spill Joey’s secret to anyone in the whole time they’d been travelling. They were both a little worried that someone might decide to kill Joey for fun if they knew he was a dragon, and Travis thought that going over and talking about dragons to strangers probably wasn’t a good idea on the ‘keeping things a secret’ front. 

“I just…if they go south, they’re going to get hurt. The matriarch let us go because of me. They’re humans, and if they’re going to look for dragons, they’re looking to kill someone or get treasure, and they’ll die. Travis.” Joey turned to him, expression a little pained. “I can’t let some people go get killed for no reason.”

“And you can’t let them to killing dragons for no reason, right?” Travis asked. 

Looking away, Joey nodded. Not surprisingly, he had strong opinions about people killing dragons. 

“Okay. Just be careful, okay?”

“I’m always careful,” Joey promised, standing up.

“You’re literally never careful,” Travis disagreed, and the two of them headed over to the four guys’ table. 

“Of course we are,” the smaller guys was assuring the freckled guy as Joey and Travis approached the table. “I hate to break this to you, but none of us is immortal.”

“ _You_ are,” freckles accused.

“That’s different.” The short guy looked up at them as they approached. “Can we help you gentlemen? Or gentle people, anyway?” he added, with a curious glance at Joey. 

Joey didn’t seem to notice that. “You guys are going to look for dragons?” he asked them. 

“We’re going to look for dragon nests.” The short guy seemed to be the leader of the group, judging by the way that the other three seemed to be waiting for him to talk. “With any luck, the dragons won’t be home.” 

“They will be,” Joey promised. “Why are you looking for dragons?”

“Why the fuck do you care?” freckles asked, his tone making Travis bristle a little. “We’re having a private conversation here, God.”

“You’re very loud, you know,” Joey told them.

“Sully’s question is valid,” the big southerner said, finger tapping on the table. “Not to be rude, but it’s not really any of your business.”

“Yeah,” Joey agreed, and Travis concurred. “You just all seem really friendly, and dragons are assholes. No offence, but they’ll kill you. You should go somewhere safer.” He said it in such a straightforward way. One that invited questions by its very nature. Travis hoped that nobody asked any.

“Nobody ever had fun going somewhere safer,” the short guy said, with a bit of a smile. “And the dragons have something we need. So thanks for the advice, but we’ll be fine.” And that was that, by the way he said it. His mind wasn’t going to be changed.

“You won’t be, though!”

Travis put his hand on Joey’s shoulder. “Joey, you said your piece. Let them be.”

“No,” Joey said, shaking Travis’s hand off. “They’re going to die.” He sounded upset.

The short guy didn’t seem bothered. “Everyone dies, it’s hardly something to get all upset about,” he said, as if that made any sense. “But for what it’s worth, none of us plan to be killed by dragons.”

Joey growled a bit, shifting under his cloak. “Fine, then we’re going with you,” he announced.

“What?”

“What?” Travis echoed.

“We just got back from there.” Joey held his head firm, ignoring Travis as he faced this guy down. “We know the way around. You’re going to need help if you don’t want to get killed.”

“Joey.”

“Travis, it’s important,” Joey insisted, voice almost pleading. “We can’t let them go alone.”

“We don’t need a tour guide. Thanks for the offer, but we’ve made it through plenty of dangerous situations before now,” the short guy told Joey, tone dismissive.

“But you just said you’d never met a real dragon before—you don’t understand how dangerous they are.”

With a sigh, the short guy leaned forward a bit as if to threaten. “And you don’t understand how dangerous we are,” he told Joey, despite not looking dangerous at all. “You two obviously got out of there unscathed, there’s no reason why we won’t as well.”

“You…” Joey was losing his patience, Travis could tell. 

“Look,” short guy interrupted, holding up a hand. “I can’t stop you from following us if you want to, okay? But we’re not feeding you and we’re not paying you, and if your intention is to get in our way, then that’s just a very bad idea and there’s a string of robbers and zombies and evil mages from here to the east coast that will agree with me on that.” Travis wondered what that meant and whether it was true, but the guy wasn’t done. “We have a job to do and we’re going to do it. So stop trying to stop us, okay?”

Joey locked eyes with the guy from under his cloak, challenging him. Travis had never been able to withstand the look he knew was on Joey’s face for long, and fully expected the other guy to relent. 

But instead, Joey looked away. “Fine,” he said, sullen. “But we’re going with you.”

“Suit yourselves.” The tone the guy used pissed Travis off, like he was dismissing Joey. Travis kind of wanted to punch him. Short guy looked at his big northerner friend. “When we passed through that marketplace yesterday, I saw a guy with a whetstone sharpening weapons. Let’s make sure we drop by there while we’re out?”

“Right,” the northerner said, as if Travis and Joey weren’t there. “We need to get Sully some proper weapons as well.”

“I have a knife,” Sully told them both.

“You have a piece of shit,” short guy said, with a shake of his head. “It barely cuts cheese. We’ll get you a real knife.” They were threatening them, Travis realized. Making sure that Joey and him knew that the four of them would be armed and dangerous.

It didn’t matter. Travis didn’t plan to hurt them and he doubted Joey did either. Though maybe it was the two of them who needed to look out. 

“Before we set out I’ll put some enchantments on all the weapons, just to be extra cautious. It never hurts,” said the southerner, also ignoring them.

Joey growled a little, definitely picking up on the threats inherent as well, and he turned and headed back for their table. With one last look at the four of them, Travis followed him. 

There, Joey didn’t sit, just stood there for a minute, hand on the table. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I should have asked you before I…”

“It’s okay,” Travis told him, rubbing Joey’s back, giving him a bit of a push. The two of them went off a bit, into the stairwell. He pulled back Joey’s hood, kissed his forehead. “You were just trying to help.”

“I just…they’re going to die, or they’re going to kill someone. Treasure hunters,” Joey growled, shaking his head, irritable. 

Travis pulled him into a hug, resting his chin between Joey’s horns. “You’re a good person,” he told Joey, holding him. 

Joey hugged him back, face buried in Travis’s chest. “I know you’d rather not go back.”

Travis would indeed rather not go back, but he smiled. “It’s fine. You never know, maybe you’ll learn something the second time around.” 

“I’d settle for keeping those assholes alive.”

Travis laughed, nodding. “Yeah. Hey, you never know. Maybe we’ll end up being friends with them.”

“That would be cool,” Joey said, sighing. “I guess. We should go back and finish eating.”

“Yeah.” Travis let go of Joey, looked down at him. He leaned in and kissed Joey, pulling his hood back up. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Joey said. And the two of them held hands as they went back out to eat, and to prepare for their next journey.


End file.
